AREQUIPA, Peru – Cuban doctor Adrián Pupo Ojeda, 28 years old and a kidnapping victim in Mexico, would have been released this Saturday, according to a source close to CubaNet.
According to Daniela Pons, a former classmate of Pupo Ojeda, the doctor sent an audio to her family from a woman’s phone to let them know that she was “safe.”
“All of his belongings had been taken away and he had no other means of communication. We still do not know at what exact point they left it (…) Once they have the address, we have to go look for it and take it to a safe place,” Pons explained.
Given the limited information and the suspicion of some trick on the part of the kidnappers, Pupo Ojeda’s family waits for the doctor to establish communication again and confirm, in fact, his release.
Adrián Pupo Ojeda was kidnapped in the Aztec country while trying to reach the United States. Before being released, his captors had asked the family for more money for the ransom.
Dariannis Méndez, a close friend of the young man, told this newspaper that the doctor left Cuba with a “coyote” who took him to Tapachulafrom where they sent a video in which the young man appeared confirming his arrival in Mexican territory.
However, a criminal group kidnapped him in that city border and began to ask for money for his release.
From the doctor’s own cell phone, people called the young man’s relatives in Cuba by videoconference, to ask for a reward for his freedom. The initial amount demanded It was 10,000 dollars.
However, after sending about $5,000, a sum that the family was able to collect, the captors responded that it did not reach them, but rather it was sent to another person and they demanded more.
The kidnapped young man graduated as a doctor from the University of Las Tunas and is the father of a child who is about to turn two years old. His case transcends in the midst of the largest migratory exodus in the history of Cuba, which began in 2021 and left hundreds of missing and dead people.