Ex-Hostages in Ecuador Head Home to U.S.; Ransom Prompts Debate

Smiling and appearing rejuvenated, four freed American oil workers headed for home late Friday as Ecuadoreans expressed concern that the reported $13-million ransom for the release could set off a kidnapping industry in their unstable country.

The Americans, held hostage along with three others for months, had been recovering from their ordeal at a five-star hotel in Quito, the capital. They left for the airport just before dark and boarded a jet that took off for the United States. Its precise destination wasn’t disclosed.

The men had earlier shaved scraggly beards and trimmed long hair that grew during 4 1/2 months of grueling captivity. Their captors, described as a professional gang of Colombian kidnappers, kept them on a jungle march almost continuously.

The captives--who also included a Chilean, an Argentine and a New Zealander--were picked up by a military patrol at a prearranged rendezvous point Thursday in northeastern Ecuador’s oil-rich Amazon jungle near the border with Colombia.

Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said Friday that the ransom would be used by the kidnappers “to step up violence, perhaps other kidnappings or other crimes” along Ecuador’s northern border region.

Moeller said in Washington that Ecuador’s security forces stayed on the sidelines during the four-month hostage ordeal at the request of the U.S., Chilean and Argentine governments.

He also said the kidnappers could be members of various Colombian paramilitary or rebel groups, “for sure financed by the drug lords.”

The commander of Ecuador’s air force, Gen. Oswaldo Dominguez, said of the widely reported ransom: “We celebrate their liberation, but this is a bad sign that could eventually promote a perverse industry of abduction.”

The kidnappers killed Ronald Clay Sander, 54, of Missouri in January to pressure his employer, Oklahoma-based Helmerich & Payne Inc., to pay up.

The Americans freed Thursday were identified as David Bradley of Casper, Wyo., another Helmerich & Payne employee; and Arnold Alford, Steve Derry and Jason Weber of Gold Hill, Ore., all employees of Erickson Air-Crane, a helicopter company.

The men were seized Oct. 12 from an oil camp in the Pompeya jungle region and flown deep into the jungle in a hijacked helicopter.

They said they did not know until after their release that Sander had been killed.

German Scholz, a Chilean consultant for European energy giant Repsol-YPF, told Channel 10 television Thursday shortly after being freed that the kidnappers told them that Sander had been liberated as part of a ransom deal.

“On Jan. 24, the day that we were separated from him, we shook hands and said goodbye,” Scholz recalled. “The promise was that they were freeing Ron because that was the deal they had agreed to with the oil companies.”

The ransom payment has sparked a debate about how to prevent a spillover of Colombia’s thriving kidnapping trade in the lawless border region that separates the two countries.

Colombia has the world’s highest kidnapping rate, with about 3,700 abductions annually.

Tiny, impoverished Ecuador has suffered severe political instability in recent years, including two military-supported coups. It is seen as having little ability to control violence spilling over the border.

The secretary of Ecuador’s bishops’ conference, Msgr. Jose Vicente Equiguren, said the success of the kidnapping “may also lead others to believe that it is a good business and to attempt it.”

However, the chief of Ecuador’s anti-kidnapping police unit, Bolivar Cardenas, said interviews with the ex-hostages provided information that could help thwart future abduction attempts.

“We are going to use all the information that they gave us so that we’ll be able to prevent this situation from happening again,” said Cardenas, who also linked the kidnapping to armed groups in Colombia.

The men’s companies have not publicly confirmed the ransom.

The kidnappers are believed to be responsible for the 1999 abduction of eight foreign oil pipeline workers, whose employer never confirmed that it paid a ransom for their release.