'WE WERE TOO SCARED TO REPORT IT': EXPRESS ABDUCTIONS ON THE RISE IN CRISIS-HIT VENEZUELA

It was 5pm on a Sunday afternoon when Elena and her husband Juan were jolted out of their car by three armed men and bundled into an unknown vehicle.
The couple stopped their 4x4 when the two preceding vehicles came to an abrupt halt and a third one pulled up behind them, marking the start of their abduction.
They spent the following seven hours in the kidnappers’ vehicle with their heads resting between their legs, unable to move, while the unidentified men negotiated their release.
“At first it is very violent, everything happens very fast,” said Elena, who asked that her real name not be printed for security reasons. 
In a country where most live in poverty and criminality is rampant, express abductions have become a business – the bread and butter of Venezuela’s notorious gangs as well as its petty criminals.

 

• George Cambisaca