Colombian kidnappers thwart Chicagoan

www.suntimes.com January 31, 2003 BY ANA MENDIETA STAFF REPORTER

When Johnner Londono flew to Colombia on Thanksgiving Day, he still hoped to work out the release of his father, kidnapped by Marxist guerrillas five months earlier on Father's Day.

But the 22-year-old analyst for CNA Financial Corp. said Thursday he barely got back to Chicago with his own life.

Londono was ready to pay $15,000 cash of the $50,000 demanded as ransom by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC. That was all the money he was able to collect through his own savings and a second mortgage on a family home in Colombia.

He not only lost that money, but is giving up hope of seeing his father, Jose Londono, alive again.

On Dec. 12 Londono met with hitmen hired by his father's abductors in Guacari, a town about 30 miles outside his family's home in Palmira. He says he was punched in the stomach several times, and they poured about a gallon of gasoline on him and threatened to set him on fire if he didn't pay the ransom.

"He asked me if I wanted to go to hell,'' Londono says of one of his attackers. "'If you don't give me that money, I'm going to set you on fire and leave you right here,' the man said. So I told him: 'Then finish me up because I don't have the money,' '' Londono recounted.

The FARC hitman then spat on Londono and said he would only see his father again if he paid the ransom. The abductors knew the family only had $15,000 available, Londono said.

Londono went back to his family's home in Palmira, located in southwestern Colombia about several hours southwest of the capital Bogota, to wait. A memo sent by FARC to Londono's family in Colombia on Jan. 9 warned they would be in danger if they didn't pay.

So when Londono met again with the hit squad Jan. 20, he took his only money with him. But the hitmen grabbed the money and said his father wouldn't be released until they received $35,000 more to make up the full ransom.

"They lied to me,'' he said. "They asked me to give the money in exchange for information on my father, and they didn't tell me anything else. They just said my father was OK and ordered me to shut up when I asked more questions."

Londono said he cried and pled for his father's release, to no avail.

"They don't like begging, the more you beg the more agitated they get,'' Londono said.

More than 3,000 people are kidnapped every year in Colombia, a country with one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world. Colombia's civil war pits the 18,000-member FARC and the National Liberation Army or ELN against the government and the paramilitary groups. About 3,500 people, mainly civilians, die in the fighting each year.

Londono returned to Chicago on Jan. 21 and is now prepared for the worst. His only regret is that he last saw his father seven years ago. Jose Londono was living in Venezuela before he was abducted June 16 with 20 others at a roadblock about eight hours northwest of Bogota. Londono's parents were divorced 14 years ago.

"I'll have to wait for whatever the kidnappers decide to do. They will either release my father's body, or I'll never see him again."