The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, March 02, 2001, Page 5, Image 5
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Kidnapped oil workers
freed in Ecuador jungle
■ Victims released
after kidnappers
receive $13 million
by Carlos Cisternas
Associated Press
QUITO, Ecuador—Seven foreign
oil workers, including four Americans,
kidnapped last October in Ecuador’s
petroleum-rich northeast jungle were
freed Thursday in exchange for $13
million, military and police officials
said.
Rear Adm. Craig Quigley,
spokesman for Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld, said in Washington
that the captives had been freed, but
offered no details. Abducted with the
four Americans were a Chilean, an
Argentine and a New Zealander.
Ecuadorean television reports said
the captives were freed Thursday
morning near Santa Rosa de Cascales,
a few miles from Ecuador’s northern
border with Colombia, about 90 miles
east of Quito.
An Ecuadorean military
intelligence officer, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, told The
Associated Press that all seven were
picked up by a military patrol and taken
to Lago Agrio, 110 miles northeast of
the capital, Quito.
They were being treated for
exhaustion, cuts and bruises, he said.
The men had marched a long distance
through the jungle to a prearranged
rendezvous point for their release, he
said.
It was not immediately clear when
the men would be flown to the capital.
Ten foreign oil workers were
kidnapped Oct. 12 from an oil camp
in the Pompeya jungle region, about
45 miles south of the border with
Colombia and 150 miles east of the
capital, Quito. Two French captives
escaped a few days later.
The body of kidnap victim Ronald
Sander, 54, an employee of Tulsa, Okla.,
oil company Helmerich & Payne, Inc.,
was found on a jungle road Jan. 31.
Sander, of Sunrise Beach, Mo., had
been shot five times in the back and
was covered in a white sheet scrawled
with the words in Spanish: “I am a
gringo. For nonpayment of ransom. HP
company.”
Military and oil industry sources
said the killing came after the
kidnappers refused to budge from an
$80 million ransom demand.
Police sources told The Associated
Press that negotiators settled on a $ 13
million ransom in mid-February, just
ahead of the kidnappers’ deadline to
kill a second captive.
An oil industry source from a
company that employs one of the
captives told The Associated Press that
the ransom was wrapped in plastic and
delivered last Thursday and thrown
from a helicopter near the Ecuadorean
banks of the San Miguel River, which
separates Ecuador from Colombia.
El Comercio, Quito’s leading daily,
reported the ransom was paid in non
sequential $100 bills.
Jimmie Gimmeson, the mother of
kidnap victim David Bradley, another
Helmerich & Payne employee, said
last week that she had received
confirmation from the company that
ransom was paid after the kidnappers
sent back answers to questions she
provided—answers only her son could
know.
The American captives have been
identified as Bradley of Casper, Wyo.,
and Arnold Alford, Steve Derry and
Jason Weber of Gold Hill, Ore., all
employees of Erickson Air-Crane, a
helicopter company.
The other hostages are Dennis
Corrin of New Zealand, an Erickson
employee; German Scholz of Chile, a
consultant for energy giant Repsol-YPF
SA; and Juan Rodriguez of Argentina,
an employee of a subsidiary for
Schlumberger Ltd., a New York-based
oil field services company.
Authorities believe the kidnappers
are members of the same criminal gang
that held seven Canadians and an
American for ransom for 100 days in
1999.
Osama bin Laden celebrates
suicide bombing of USS Cole
■ Islamic militant
describes destroyer
as 'ship of injustice'
by Tarek Al-Issawi
Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
— The world’s most wanted Islamic
militant, Osama bin Laden, has applauded
the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden,
describing the destroyer as a ship of
injustice that sailed to its doom.
Bin Laden’s remarks were recorded
at a family celebration in Afghanistan and
broadcast on Qatar’s satellite channel, Al
Jazeera, Thursday.
Two suicide bombers detonated a
small boat hill of explosives alongside the
USS Cole as it refueled in Aden harbor,
Yemen, on Oct. 12, killing 17 American
sailors and wounding 39 others.
Yemeni and U.S. investigators have
said publicly they have no hard evidence
I
linking the attack to bin Laden, but one
of the suspects told interrogators he
believed he was acting under orders
emanating from the Saudi dissident.
Bin Laden recited a poem at a
gathering held Monday to celebrate last
month’s marriage of his son, Mohammed,
in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
“In Aden, the young man stood up
for holy war and destroyed a destroyer
feared by the powerful,” he said. He spoke
of the ship as having sailed “to its doom”
along a course of “false arrogance, self
conceit and strength.”
Shouts of Allahu Akbar, or God is
Great, punctuated his reading of the poem,
part of which was dedicated to the children
of the Palestinian uprising.
It was the first time bin Laden had
spoken publicly about the Cole attack.
Al-Jazeera said bin Laden’s mother,
two brothers and a sister had flown to
Afghanistan for the event on an Afghan
plane that was returning from Saudi Arabia
after dropping off travelers to the annual
Muslim pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina
The reception was attended by several
members of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban
militia and hundreds of armed Arab
fighters.
Bin Laden was shown sitting between
his son Mohammed and Abu Hafas al
Masri, an Egyptian who fought with the
elder bin Laden in the 1980s against Soviet
forces in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire
dissident, has been indicted by the United
States for the 1998 bombings of the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that
killed 224 people. Days after the
bombings, the United States fired dozens
of Tomahawk cruise missiles at presumed
bin Laden camps in eastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban have refused to surrender
bin Laden to the United States, despite
U.N. sanctions imposed last month.
The Taliban say Washington has not
provided proof of his guilt and that it is
against Afghan tradition to hand over a
guest to his enemies.
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OPENS FRIDAY, MARCH 2 IN THEATRES EVERYWHERE
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House passes legislation
revising bankruptcy law
by Marcy Gordon
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Buoyed by
anticipated approval from President Bush,
legislation that would make it harder for
people to erase credit card and other
debts in bankruptcy court passed the
House on Thursday.
The vote was 306-108, with
Republicans solidly supporting the
bipartisan bill and Democrats split.
Momentum for passage of the measure
came despite new government data
showing that personal bankruptcies in
this country have declined in recent years.
The legislation, which has been
pushed by the banking and retail credit
industries and opposed by consumer
groups and unions, is expected to be
signed by Bush if it gets through Congress.
It was passed overwhelmingly last
year, then was vetoed in December by
then-President Clinton on grounds it hurt
ordinary people and working families
who fall on hard times.
Supporters of the legislation,
which would bring the most sweeping
overhaul of the bankruptcy laws in 20
years, contend it is needed to stem a tide
of bankruptcy filings and abuse of the
court system. They say bankruptcy abuse
creates a hidden tax of about $400 a year
on each American family in the form
of higher interest rates passed on by'
consumer credit businesses and other
charges.
The legislation “strikes the proper
balance” between debtors and creditors,
Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., said in House
debate Thursday before the vote. “It is
•fc
‘The American people should know that a
debtor can live in a mansion in Florida worth
millions ... and not worry. If you are barely
making it... woe is you: Those credit card
companies will be able'to chase you forever.’
Rep. William Delahunt
D-Mass.
agood bill, and it protects consumers.”
But Stephen Brobeck, executive
director of the Consumer Federation
of America, complained this week that
the measure would force many people
“into a virtual debtors’ prison.”
Brobeck cited new data by the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
showing that personal bankruptcy filings
fell from a peak of about 1.4 million in
1998 to 1.3 million in 1999 and to 1.2
* million last year.
Opponents of the legislation maintain
it would hurt families hitby job losses,
catastrophic medical expenses or other
unforeseeable hardships that push them
over the edge financially, especially amid
the economic slowdown that has made
layoffs frequent.
“The American people should know,
that a debtor can live in a mansion in
Florida worth millions... and not worry,”
said Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.
But, he added, “If you are barely making
it... woe is you: Those credit card
companies will be able to chase you
forever.”
“Every fair-minded American should
find this offensive and unconscionable,”
Delahunt declared.
Foes also criticize what they say are
aggressive credit card solicitations through
the mail, which reached 2.51 billion by
the end of last year’s third quarter,
according to industry figures. Total credit
extended on card accounts jumped 13
percent to S2.9 trillion in the third quarter
of 2000 from a year earlier.
The Senate Judiciary Committee
. voted Wednesday 10-8 to approve parallel
legislation and send it to the full Senate,
which might vote next week. Senate
Democrats previously had blocked a
Republican effort to rush it through that
chamber, where the two parties have a
50-50 split.
In a related move Wednesday, the
House overwhelmingly passed a bill that
would allow farmers filing for bankruptcy
to continue to receive special protection
so they would not have to sell their
equipment.
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