Abductions on the rise in Haiti as poor grow desperate

Current crimes called 'fast-food kidnapping'; abductors 'are after whatever they can get,' writes MARINA JIMENEZ

By MARINA JIMENEZ
Thursday, April 1, 2004 - Page A3



PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Natacha Cassis, a businesswoman from a prominent Haitian family, was thinking only of her five-year-old son as she rushed to pick him up at his posh private school. At the entrance, several young hooligans grabbed her and dragged her to her car. "Take it," she said, handing over the keys to her jeep.

It was only when they stuffed her in the back seat and sped off that Ms. Cassis realized she had been abducted by a jittery, excitable group of kidnappers who turned out to be rank amateurs.

They called her every profane name in the book and debated aloud about whether they should rape her. She was driven to Cité Soleil, an infamous Port-au-Prince slum, where one of her abductors mistakenly fired his gun, a rudimentary, homemade weapon

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