20 million dollar ransom paid in Mexico....

[Constabul Profile]

MEXICO CITY (AFP) – Mexican former presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, who was kidnapped by unknown criminals in May, was set free Saturday, the daily El Universal reported, citing a relative.

Fernandez de Cevallos was released early Saturday and appears to be healthy, the unnamed relative told the newspaper, giving no further details.

In October El Universal reported that the politician's family paid 20 million dollars ransom, and that his abductors agreed to release him in early November. The family neither confirmed nor denied the report.

Fernandez de Cevallos vanished on May 15 after he had driven to his ranch in the central Mexican state of Queretaro.

A prominent member of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN), Fernandez de Cevallos, 69, ran for president in 1994.

A brash, cigar-chomping candidate, he finished second in the election, losing to former president Ernesto Zedillo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Fernandez de Cevallos remained a key player in the PAN, and is close to President Felipe Calderon, also a PAN member. Currently he is a partner in a law firm with Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont.

The government launched a massive manhunt soon after Fernandez de Cevallos was kidnapped, but relatives asked them to call it off so they could negotiate with the abductors.

It is unclear who snatched the politician.

The kidnapping was at first blamed on leftist guerrillas, but the small Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which operates sporadically in southern Mexico, issued a statement explicitly rejecting any role in the abduction.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101127/wl ... 1127153344

[Disinfoagent007 Profile]

CIA needed money to fund the next Al CIAda attack?