Like torture and rape, kidnapping is one of the worst crimes committed against any person. It is typical of organized gangs. And although scholars have drawn up a typology, which recognizes up to 8 types of kidnapping (due to their motivations, methods of capturing the victims, duration, purpose of the criminals), there are two fundamental issues in common: the first, the extortive nature of the crime; and the second, the excessive physical, moral and psychological pressure that the kidnappers exert on the human prey they manage to capture.
A kidnapping is nothing more than the establishment of a hell, the one in which the kidnapped person is introduced, and also their friends and family. It is, basically, a method of torture, which is based on the most inhuman reasoning: if they do not give me what I ask for, I will end the life of the kidnapped person or I will torture or enslave them or subject them to multiple sufferings. And it is that, in addition, at the heart of the planning of each kidnapping is a crucial fact: the kidnapper always wants something that is not possible to obtain within the framework of the rule of law. He wants an exorbitant amount of money, which the hostage’s family or the organization to which he belongs (a company) does not have or cannot deliver; he wants the authorities to release dangerous criminals who remain imprisoned for the crimes they have committed; they want, in the case of countries where there is some kind of armed conflict, to use kidnapping to propose an exchange of “prisoners”; or, which is nothing but a form of State terrorism, the one that the Maduro regime has been using, which consists of kidnapping family members, including children, to force someone persecuted by power, who has managed to escape from the Sebin or the Dgcim or the Conas or the GAES or the PNB or any other of the organized gangs that operate under the discretion of the State, so that they surrender to the illegitimate, illegal, fraudulent and torturing power that subjects Venezuelan society.
Of the horrors to which each hostage is subjected; of the profound impact that uncertainty has on the psyche and perceptual systems of the victims; of the profound moral and psychological disorder that living subjected to silence, humiliation, ridicule, permanent disdain, extreme and precarious living conditions means; of the scope that the reality of having been uprooted from everyday life to be locked up -buried- in a condition of non-life, without rights, broken ties with the world, disconnected from everything and always exposed, has on the mind and feelings to the arbitrariness, anger and violence of the kidnappers, the testimonies of those who have suffered this experience and, despite everything, have survived.
On YouTube are the videos of the Recognition Hearings that began on June 21, in Colombia: the general presentation of what happened (by authorities and using resources such as videos) and the testimonies of the victims of kidnappings by the narcoguerrilla of the FARC, for hours and hours -the first day the hearing lasted for more than 12 hours-, confronted with the 7 members of the Secretariat of that organization.
They are chilling sessions, where the stories of the captivity not only account for the planning with which these crimes were committed, but also the dehumanization; cruel treatment of women, children and the elderly; cold blood; cruelty; the ferocity; recurrence -whose result was the desire to die that appeared in the victims-; humiliation as purpose; the chains; sexual violence; forced marches; the pain out of all proportion to which the bodies of the kidnapped were subjected, no less than by the partners, at various levels, of the Maduro, Ortega-Murillo and Castro regimes.
Why bring to this article the history of the horrors that have occurred in the neighboring country, whose consequences continue to weigh almost unbearably on the lives of the citizens of Colombia? Because the criminals, the narco-guerrillas, among their confessions, said that the kidnapping policy, in addition to being a source of financing, had as its purpose the exchange of imprisoned narco-guerrillas for those kidnapped by the guerrillas. That is the reason why they put special interest in kidnapping “special targets”, such as officials, civilians or members of the State security forces, and political leaders, local authorities and even minors, particularly if they were sons of high military or police ranks. At the Reconnaissance Hearing, one of the guerrilla chiefs said: “With the prisoners we wanted to achieve a political objective, which was the exchange of imprisoned guerrillas for the prisoners we had. Our commander, Manuel Marulanda, was obsessed with it until the end and we were about to achieve it”.
The logic of kidnapping “special targets” to exchange them for prisoners: this is the new guideline of Maduro’s foreign policy. The desperate efforts to achieve the release of Alex Saab have triggered this very serious alarm: the United States government has issued a communication to its citizens, in which they are warned: if they travel to Venezuela they can be arrested. That is, to join the 8 prisoners that the regime already has in its power and that it hopes to swell, to formalize the exchange for Saab. In the logic of Manuel Marulanda/FARC, if the counterpart does not yield, there is no other way than to increase the number of people in captivity.
The same policy with which the country’s democratic opposition has been tried to break (maintaining a permanent number of between 250 and 350 political prisoners) has been put in place to achieve the release of the criminal Saab. There is real danger going on. And, hopefully not, very soon it could be extended to citizens of other nationalities. Once they have crossed a first threshold (that of kidnapping US citizens), they can take a second step: will they start arresting European citizens?
