Drug traffickers in Medellin have abducted at least 20 people, including members of Colombia's richest families, as part of their terrorist war against the government, police said.
Most of the victims were kidnapped in the past two months in Medellin, the center of the country's cocaine trade, said a police spokesman in Medellin.The spokesman, reached by telephone, refused to identify himself.
A statement sent by the Medellin cartel said traffickers had ordered the "leaders of working-class neighborhoods to take members of the traditional oligarchy hostage."
Half of the ransom paid by family members for the release of the hostages will be used to finance the war against the government of President Virgilio Barco, said the communique, published Friday in local newspapers.
The cartel said it would use the other half of the money to finance the construction of housing for the needy. The communique did not mention the amount of ransom demanded by traffickers.
The cartel offered no explanation as to why it would need money at a time when its reputed leader, Pablo Escobar, has a personal fortune estimated at $2 billion.
Government officials have suggested that Escobar's cocaine-smuggling business has been hurt by the government's war on drugs, but it appeared the wave of kidnappings was the Medellin cartel's latest attempt to pressure the government into abandoning its war on drugs.
Barco launched the offensive in August after traffickers killed Sen. Luis Carlos Galan, a leading presidential candidate. Authorities have confiscated hundreds of properties allegedly belonging to the traffickers, extradited 11 drug suspects to the United States and killed one leader of the Medellin cartel, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, in a gunfight.