billy.pilgrim wrote:so called Senator Marco Rubio, answering so called questions after a so called town hall event in Iowa on Saturday, said so-called prisoner “swaps” had “created an incentive” for governments around the world to take hostages.
That's true for Iran and North Korea. Bogus arrests followed by thinly veiled ransom demands are a big source of foreign currency for both countries.
North Korea also has thousands of
South Korean and dozens, possibly hundreds of
Japanese kidnapping victims. (And they still haven't returned all the passengers and crew from an
airliner hijacked to North Korea in the 1960s.) They have "tourists resorts" set up for relatives to visit the victims, while being fleeced for all their foreign currency.
While not officially governments, there are rebel groups in Peru and the Philippines with near-total control over their areas, who launch raids outside their areas to kidnap tourists for ransom. And of course kidnapping for ransom - entire ships' crews at a time - is a booming business in Somalia and the surrounding area. Once the fish stocks were depleted almost overnight - vacuumed up by foreign fishing fleets from half a world away - Somali fishermen needed a new product to sell to the local warlords.
