SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic—A diplomat from the Dominican Republic apparently has been kidnapped in neighboring Haiti, prompting Dominican authorities to call for his safe release.
The local newspaper El Dia reported Tuesday that the government also had beefed up its military presence on the border, though officials did not immediately have any comment on that.
The Dominican government said in a weekend statement that Carlos Guillén Tatis, the agriculture counselor at its embassy in Port-au-Prince, apparently was kidnapped on Friday while travelling toward a border crossing.
Ambassador Faruk Miguel Castillo said Guillén Tatis apparently was kidnapped in the Croix-des-Bouquets district of the Haitian capital. That area is a stronghold of the 400 Mawozo gang that kidnapped 17 people from a U.S. missionary group in October and held most of them until December.
Dominican authorities said they had given Haitian police evidence from the diplomat’s mobile telephone that indicated he'd been kidnapped.
In what may have been an unrelated development, Haiti’s National Police announced that one of the top leaders of the 400 Mawozo gang, Germine Joly, was extradited to the United States on Tuesday aboard an FBI plane.
It said he faces U.S. charges involving smuggling, import of weapons of war, and kidnapping.
Joly, known as “Yonyon,” had been in a Haitian prison for several years.
The police statement noted that his gang was involved in bloody gang clashes that broke out late last month in the Croix-des-Bouquets area. At least 20 people were killed and thousands fled their homes.
