Sunday, April 09, 2006

 

The Blanco-Bandes and the Faddoul kidnappings

Originally published

After I published the last post where El Universal mentioned the video sent to the family of the Faddoul brothers, some of the readers were asking me about the three girls that were kidnapped in the Tuy Valley, the same area where the Faddouls were staying in captivity.

I did a little search and I found that the case had some similaritied to that of the Faddouls. The story can be found here.

There were three sisters, ages 16, 14 and 13 that were kidnapped closed to their homes in Ocumare del Tuy. They went out with their cousin to buy Chinese rice and stopped in a convenience store where the kidnappers took possession of the car. After a while, the kidnappers let the cousin out of the car and took the three girls.

The girls were advised not to try to escape because the whole region was full of “captors”.

The kidnappers explained to the girls that the kidnapping had been planned in Colombia with a roulette. They had chosen at random Venezuela, then Ocumare del Tuy and finally they had searched the richest people in the area. They knew exactly the dayly routine of the Blanco-Bandes family.

One day the girls were told that his dad had payed up the ransom money and that they were going to be liberated. They were left alone. The oldest stayed and told the other two to get into the bush so that if the captors came back, they would only take one of them. But this time their dad and the police were the ones who came and the story for them had a very happy ending.

According to this link, two of the kidnappers were detained when they were to Petare, in Caracas, to take the ransom money. They were the ones that told the police the precise location where the girls were kept. They belonged to the band of Alirio Contreras, a Colombian with a kidnapping ring in all the Miranda state.

Now, about the dates. The report form La Voz says that the girls were kidnapped on March the 3rd and that they were liberated on the march 10.

Interestingly, a few days later, La Voz explains that days after the release of the three girls, the Police was searching the whole area to catch the head of the kidnapers band, Alirio José Contreras.

Alirio Contreras was finally arrested in Petare on March the 15, according to El Universal.

After reading this story, I found the relationship with the Faddoul case even more puzzling. When the Police was looking for Contreras, didn’t they ask for hints about the Faddoul? Don’t forget that the Faddoul were in the area all the days the girls were in captivity and afterwords when the Police supposedly searched for Contreras.


Don’t forget either that the Faddoul video was produced on March 9 and handed to the family on March 12.

So here are the new corrected event dates (according to what I could extract from the newspaper articles):

Feb 23, the Faddouls are kidnapped
March 3, the Blanco girls are kidnapped
March 9, the Faddoul video is produced
March 10, the Blanco girls are released
March 12, the Faddoul family received the video
March 10-15 the Tuy area is searched for Alirio Contreras
March 15 Alirio Contreras is arrested in Petare
April 4 The Faddouls are found dead
April 7 The case is almost solved.

Bad luck? Incompentence? Or convenient overlook by someone around the whereabouts of the Faddoul brothers?

Reporting from Cyberspace

Jorge Arena
Devoted Ghost Blogger.
http://arenaspace.blogspot.com
http://chavezfortheun.blogspot.com

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