Of the 17 US mission workers, both adults and children, who were kidnapped by Haitian thugs this past October, three of them were released on December 5. Originally, the kidnappers put a price of $1 million per head on their prisoners with no children under 12 discounts. Amid ongoing negotiations for a better deal, an unknown mysterious figure emerged from the shadows. A would-be superhero, if you will.
The as-yet-unidentified stranger struck a bargain with the gang that was supposed to lead to every last one of the mission workers being set free. But the good samaritan got duped when they only let three of them go.
This is the first public acknowledgment by Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) that any kind of money was ever paid out. For security and safety reasons, CAM was fairly good about keeping the negotiations under wraps. Information was only released on a need-to-know basis to federal authorities and such.
Just prior to Christmas, CAM revealed how they’d been working with a third party but they wouldn’t comment at that point on whether any money had yet exchanged hands. That was their business.
CAM did say they were against paying a cash ransom strictly on principle, so they had initially offered the kidnappers a different type of payment in the form of food boxes. Surely they were hungry, and after all, a man’s stomach is the way to his heart. They said their generous offer was immediately rejected. The gang didn’t want no government cheese.
Since the hostages weren’t worthy of CAM spending its own money on, they say gladly accepted letting whoever this third party who we still have no idea was, have a go at it. No skin off of their righteous rears.
Philip Mast, an executive committee member at CAM, said the organization had adhered to its “no ransom policy” in a talk he recently gave in Crossville, Tennessee at Mt. Moriah Mennonite Chruch. But this is technically a fib. A ransom was in fact paid, just by someone else who they authorized to do so, and since none of them personally touched the money and all… But unless you’re blinded by the light you don’t have to squint too hard to see through the communion wafers.
Get this. “There was a donor who offered to take the negotiations and deal with the situation, and so CAM accepted that offer, and it was turned over to another party to deal with.” This was code for, “we washed our hands of the situation.” But did they? Really? This stinks worse than a red tide in August.
Mast also fessed up about how things hadn’t gone so well for the mysterious shadow donor of unknown origin. “Yes,” he said. “There was [sic] ransom paid, but I don’t think (the gang members) had the intention of releasing the prisoners.” Duh on two accounts. Shadow-Man isn’t real and sending those guys money was really stupid.
Had this “donor” physically traveled to Haiti to properly conduct the people/money transfer, it would have required some new ink on their passport and we would know who they were. And with not too many Americans flying to Haiti at the time all of this happened, the archaic manual logs were pretty easy to glance through. So unless this super-hero can fly via their own power…
You didn’t hear it here, but the CAM paid the money that they probably wired and lost. That’ll put a red face on anyone. And it’s been said that the wilder the tale the more people tend to believe it. “Ya can’t make stuff like that up.” Well…Yeah ‘ya can. Look at Joe Biden. He does it all the time and to a much greater extent. So there ‘ya go.
The remaining hostages were finally released. It was the 400 Mawozo gang who had seized them and money was not their initial motive. They won however much loot they walked away with in the bonus round. The gang was only holding the mission workers to try and get their own government to free their unelected official leader. It was all politics and the revolution of the day on the island of black magic, voodoo dolls, and mission workers trying to save the wretched inhabitant’s souls from eternal damnation.
As things turned out, the hostages were treated very well while in captivity. Their captors were just a bunch of entrepreneurial guys with a grudge against the Haitian government who figured they would make a few bucks in the process.
Anyway. All is well and everyone is safe now.
