The world’s largest kidnapping industry is targeting younger victims — snatching newborns, toddlers and preteens in Colombia to sell back to their parents, an anti-kidnapping group said on Wednesday. According to a report released by Pais Libre, considered the country’s leading authority on kidnapping, 383 children were abducted last year in the war-ravaged Andean nation, more than four times the number a decade ago. Many of the victims are still being held, mainly by common criminals and Marxist rebels looking for ransom money, Pais Libre said. The group added that in some cases the children were believed to have been sold into the sex trade. “Unfortunately, with the deterioration of the conflict and eroding morality, the armed participants … have come to view children as an economic resource,” said David Buitrago, Pais Libre’s legal affairs director. Full Story
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