A Colombian couple has begged captors for proof that their 10-year-old daughter is still alive, two weeks after she was kidnapped in northern Colombia.
Jorge Enrique Muñoz, father of the young girl Nohora Valentina Muñoz, said “I need to speak with my daughter, it’s the only way I have to know that she is okay.”
The 10 year old girl, whose father is the mayor of the municipality of Fortul, was kidnapped two weeks ago on her way to school.
The distraught dad also explained that various extortionists have been taking advantage of the family’s attempts to get into contact with their daughter, by calling them and demanding that they deposit money to various cellphones in order to be in contact with their daughter.
Allegedly, many of the calls came from convicts in prisons, such as Valledupar and La Modelo in Bogota.
“They say that they supposedly have the little girl, that they will let me talk to her, to buy phone cards…they are swindlers who are playing with the pain of a family and a little girl,” Muñoz lamented.
He hopes that the scam-artists will stop calling the family and leave their phone line open to talk to the real kidnappers so that they may mediate the release of Nohora Valentina.
Investigators seem to believe that the girl may have been moved to Venezuela, in order to avoid conflict with Colombian authorities who have strengthened their search in border areas.
On Friday, Colombian authorities increased the reward for information that could lead to the release of Nohora, from $50,000 to $75,000 dollars.
At her primary school, students and teachers have been continually protesting the release of their classmate and friend while Colombia’s minister for the interior publicly denounced the kidnapping as “a crime against humanity.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross is assisting in mediation and the Catholic Church have spoken out publicly, begging for Nohora’s return.