We got a Bobba Fett icon? Or maybe Judge Dread?
A rebel whose capture in Venezuela has touched off a diplomatic crisis with Colombia believed that he was going to be killed by his captors, his lawyer said Tuesday. Rodrigo Granda was snatched off the streets of Caracas by bounty hunters - purported to be moonlighting Venezuelan law enforcement officers - on Dec. 13 and driven, bound and stuffed in the trunk of a car, to the Colombian border. The Colombian government has acknowledged paying the bounty. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called the capture of Granda a kidnapping, accused Colombia of violating Venezuela's sovereignty, suspended commercial ties and demanded an apology. While in the darkened trunk of the car, Granda noticed that it turned off a main highway onto a secondary road, his attorney Miguel Gonzalez said in an interview with The Associated Press. "He thought he was going to be killed," Gonzalez said. "It was traumatic."Did you wet your pants like a baby, Senor Big Shot Narcotraficante Hombre? | After a 16-hour trip, Granda was handed over at a Colombian border city to Colombian police, who arrested him. For many Colombians, the irony of a representative of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, being kidnapped is clear. The FARC kidnaps hundreds of people each year, either for ransom or to be traded for imprisoned rebels. But Gonzalez said the government should be held to a higher standard. "All human-rights pacts demand that he be treated according to the law," the lawyer said in the interview in his small office suite overlooking downtown Bogota. |