Word: kidnappings
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sound like a bizarre theme park, but Farclandia is no fun for many Colombians. The government surrendered it to the guerrillas in 1999 in an effort to start peace talks, but that simply legitimized a safe haven in which the FARC could hide the thousands of kidnap victims it holds at any one time, as well as rustle cattle, collect hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes from the cocaine mafias it allows to operate freely in the territory and launch vicious attacks on army and police outposts across its "borders." Still, says FARC ideologue Alfonso Cano, a bearded former...
...faction in history by extracting some $100 million a year in "taxes" from drug producers and traffickers operating in the southern half of Colombia, which they control. (That must be a relief for Colombia's peasantry, of course, since it was the impoverished campesinos themselves who, along with assorted kidnap victims, had been the guerrillas' prime revenue source before the cocaine boom...
Posh Spice [OCCUPATION:] Singer [WHAT HAPPENED:] A criminal gang plotted to kidnap Posh and son Brooklyn [SUGGESTED PUNISHMENT:] Granting Posh naming rights to gang's children...