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US ballplayer’s kidnapped mother is released
CARACAS, Feb 12, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The mother of Pittsburgh Pirates catcher
Elias Diaz was released Sunday, three days after being kidnapped in the
Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, authorities said.
“Thank God, our security forces were able to rescue Mrs Ana Soto,” Zulia’s
state governor Omar Prieto said on Twitter.
Ana Soto, 72, was abducted Thursday as she chatted with neighbors outside
her home in a working-class area of the northwestern city.
Five police officers were arrested after the abduction, local press
reports said Sunday.
The five arrested officers work for state police, according to regional
newspaper La Nacion.
One is a neighbor of the family and provided his colleagues with “all the
information”needed to carry out the crime, the report said. Prieto confirmed
that they were suspects.
It said the group was detained Saturday by the national police agency
CICPC.
“It really hurts when they go after your family,” Diaz said in remarks
published Friday by the newspaper Panorama. “I only ask that they not harm
her and return her to me alive.”
Diaz, 28, is in Venezuela visiting his family, but was not with his mother
when the kidnappers drove up in a van and forced her inside.
Major league teams in the United States have urged Venezuelan players to
be careful when visiting their country, which is in the throes of an acute
economic crisis.
Their big salaries make them targets for crime, and Venezuela is extremely
violent, with a homicide rate 14 times the global average, according to the
Venezuelan Violence Observatory.
In 2011, the Venezuelan sports world was shocked by the kidnapping of MLB
catcher Wilson Ramos, then with the Washington Nationals and now playing for
the Tampa Bay Rays. The kidnappers were caught and sentenced to 20 years in
prison.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0857 hrs