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Hostages headed for home Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Jennifer Jones, 16, of Gold Hill, walks outside the city�s Post Office, which was lined with yellow ribbons Friday to welcome home Steve Derry, Arnold Alford and Jason Weber after they were held hostage for 141 days. The Erickson Air-Crane mechanics were among 10 hostages abducted Oct. 12, 2000, in Ecuador. The men were on a plane back to the United States Friday, but it is not known exactly when they will return home. Kidnappers in the Amazon kept them on the move, and in the dark By Melissa Martin Chained, forced to remain silent and fed rats, the hostages didn�t learn of fellow captive Ron Sanders� death until their liberation Thursday, captives from Argentina and Chile told media in Quito. "The news hit us hard," Argentine Juan Rodriguez told El Comercio, a Quito daily newspaper. "It was a total blow to us." Four American captives � among 10 men abducted from an Ecuador oil field Oct. 10 � stayed at a five-star Hilton Colon hotel their first night of freedom. They were transported from the hotel Friday to Quito�s international airport, where they boarded a chartered jet to the United States just before dark. It is not known exactly when the hostages will return home. Gold Hill residents Arnie Alford, Steve Derry and Jason Weber, helicopter mechanics with Erickson Air-Crane in Central Point, were among seven men who spent 141 days in the Amazon. Two French captives escaped soon after the kidnapping and a fourth, Missouri resident Sanders, was killed Jan. 31. Their captors, described as a professional gang of Colombian kidnappers, kept them on a jungle march almost continuously. Hostage German Scholz, a Chilean consultant for Spanish-Argentine energy giant Repsol-YPF, told Channel 10 television Thursday that the kidnappers had told them Sanders had been liberated as part of a ransom deal. "On Jan. 24, the day that we were separated from him, we shook hands and said goodbye," Scholz recalled. "The promise was that they were freeing Ron because that was the deal they had agreed to with the oil companies." Besides being lied to, the captives ate rats, snakes, fruit and whatever they could to survive. "From 6 p.m. until 6 a.m., we had to sleep in the hammock. We were prohibited from talking, sneezing, coughing, anything,�� Scholz told Ecuavisatelevision, recalling how his captors pushed guns in his face at night as he lay trying to sleep. "We were hanging by a thread, thinking, �Are they going to kill us, or not?� " Rodriguez said the kidnappers demanded silence for fear the Ecuadorean military would uncover their makeshift encampments. The Argentine hostage told El Comercio newspaper that the captives suffered "terrible psychological pressures" during their captivity. When he was involved in an accident, kidnappers labeled him an escape risk and chained him nonstop for four days. The other hostages were chained only at night, he told the newspaper. On Thursday, the men began walking at 7 a.m., but this time toward their freedom. Their captors sent them on their own at 9 a.m., and the hostages followed a straight course until they met military escorts. They arrived in Lago Agrio by 12:30 p.m. and were flown to Quito by 6:30 p.m. for medical checkups and government interviews. That the hostages did not know that kidnappers had murdered Sanders in January and left his bullet-ridden body on a jungle road is not a surprise, a hostage expert says. Captors filter information as a way of manipulating hostages into compliance, said Robert Klamser, executive director of Crisis Consulting International of Ventura, Calif. He works with nonprofit organizations whose personnel have been kidnapped. "In some cases, hostages hear captors say, �We tried to negotiate with people but nobody wants to hear us,� when in fact, the opposite is true," Klamser said. The hostages need time to sort truth from lies, he said. "Just being blindfolded and chained, with men standing around you with guns, has a significant psychological impact," Klamser said. "It takes time to transition from that into what�s normal. Just getting on a plane and coming home isn�t enough to resolve it and put it behind you." Klamser saw television coverage of the hostages� walk into freedom Thursday and said they look well cared for. "It�s a very traumatic event," Klamser said. "It does take time for one to adjust from being a hostage in a jungle in Latin America back into a land of McDonald�s, ATMs and CNN." Erickson and the oil companies reportedly paid $13 million in ransom last week. An oil industry source from one of the companies told The Associated Press that the nonsequential $100 bills were wrapped in plastic and thrown from a helicopter near the San Miguel River, which separates Ecuador from Colombia. The men�s companies have not publicly confirmed the ransom payment. Fear remains in Ecuador over further kidnappings. "When you negotiate independently of law enforcement, you encourage the kidnapping industry," Fausto Teran, former director of the Ecuadorean police�s anti-kidnapping unit, said in an interview on Gamavision television. "I�m not a fortune-teller, but within three months there will be another kidnapping, and perhaps not just there but in the interior of the nation," he said. The commander of Ecuador�s air force, Gen. Oswaldo Dominguez, said of the widely reported ransom: "We celebrate their liberation, but this is a bad sign that could eventually promote a perverse industry of abduction." There�s a debate about how to prevent a spillover of Colombia�s thriving kidnapping trade in the lawless border region that separates the two countries. Colombia has the world�s highest kidnapping rate, with about 3,700 abductions every year, most by leftist guerrillas and common criminals. Tiny, impoverished Ecuador has suffered severe political instability in recent years, including two military-supported coups. It is seen as having little ability to control violence spilling over the border. The secretary of Ecuador�s bishops� conference, Monsignor Jose Vicente Equiguren, said the success of the kidnapping "may also lead others to believe that it is a good business and to attempt it." HCJB Radio, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.