| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2008 
Kidnappers Free 16 Farm Workers in Mexico
 EFE
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| | Captors gave them bus fare home. | | |
Mexico City - Sixteen of the 27 farm laborers abducted earlier this week in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa were freed by their captors, the state Attorney General's Office said Thursday, vowing to continue the search for the other 11 men taken prisoner.
The 16 were released sometime after midnight Wednesday, an AG office spokesman said, citing the testimony of the only three former captives to have given statements.
Sinaloa's deputy attorney general, Rolando Bon Lopez, provided some additional details during a press conference in Culiacan, the state capital.
He said the captors told the 16 men they were free to go and gave each of them 10 pesos ($.70) for the bus fare to Culiacan, where they arrived around dawn Thursday.
All of the freed captives are apparently in good health, the AG office said.
Authorities said they assumed it is fear that is keeping the 13 other former captives from coming forward to give statements. Accordingly, the AG office has established a dedicated telephone line for the men to call with any information they are willing to provide.
The AG office said that the search continued for the other 11 laborers kidnapped Monday from the La Guajira ranch near Culiacan, which is believed to belong to the Carrillo Fuentes family, founders of the Juarez drug cartel.
Citing witness accounts, authorities said that heavily armed men wearing uniforms of navy and black arrived at the site in 15 luxury SUVs and roused more than 100 workers from their sleep, selecting 27 of them to be taken hostage.
The incident had the hallmarks of what Mexicans call a "levanton," or big lift: an abduction carried out by a drug cartel or other organized-crime element in reprisal for an earlier action by rival gangsters or police.
A levanton is characterized by the absence of ransom demands. In many cases, the captives are found dead within days of the kidnapping.
Armed groups linked to Mexico's drug cartels murdered around 2,700 people in 2007 and the death toll this year is already at more than 4,500, according to an unofficial tally kept by capital daily El Universal.
Sinaloa, birthplace of the powerful drug cartel of the same name, is among the states that have suffered most in the ongoing war pitting criminal outfits against each other and the security forces.
Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police to nearly a dozen of Mexico's 31 states in a bid to stem the violence. |
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