Haitian radio host kidnapped and killed
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| Published on Thursday, May 24, 2007 |
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By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters): A popular Haitian radio host was found shot and killed on Wednesday after being kidnapped in the impoverished Caribbean nation's capital.
Francois Latour, who hosted a daily advertising program and talk show on radio Caraibes FM, was the second radio personality gunned down in Haiti in the last week.
Colleagues said he was killed in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince shortly before dawn after being abducted at gunpoint on Tuesday evening.
"He was killed with a bullet to the stomach after being kidnapped by unidentified gunmen," Gerin Alexandre, news director at Caraibes FM, told Reuters.
The kidnappers had demanded a $100,000 ransom for Latour, but hours later his body was found dumped on the side of a Delmas street, Alexandre said.
Latour's death came a week after Alix Joseph, a radio journalist and host of a cultural show, was shot to death, execution style, in the northern city of Gonaives.
Joseph, the eighth reporter killed in Haiti since 2000, was shot 11 times.
His killer has not been identified but armed gangs have been blamed for a recent escalation of violence in Gonaives and other parts of northern Haiti.
Politically motivated violence has eased since President Rene Preval took office a year ago, but poverty, joblessness and the drug trade continue to fuel widespread crime in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. |
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