MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine gov't pledges to halt wave of abductions.

The Argentine government vowed Wednesday to battle kidnappings by criminals like the ones who horrified a Buenos Aires family and much of the nation by sending the finger of a victim and “indescribable and explicit” videotapes to press their demand for ransom.

Cabinet chief Alberto Fernandez announced a stepped-up fight against kidnapping gangs at about the same time the public learned of the release of two victims and the arrests of five people involved in their abduction.

Criticism of authorities' response to the ongoing crime wave coincides with an investigation into alleged corruption on the part of 24 former police commanders from Buenos Aires province and the erstwhile head of the Federal Police.

"We have to crack down and quickly end" the kidnappings, Fernandez said, expressing concern for Pablo Belluscio, 22, who has been held for 36 days and whose father on Wednesday published an open letter seeking help to free the youth from his "sadistic captors." The young man's abductors cut two joints off his right index finger and sent it to his family "along with indescribable and explicit videos" and their demand for a $300,000 ransom, Gustavo Belluscio said in his letter.

"They have also threatened to continue with their amputations and to kill him," the elder Belluscio wrote in a message published in the newspaper La Nacion as well as on the Internet. "They are asking for an amount of money we are utterly incapable of raising." "Today, it's our beloved son Pablo Belluscio, but tomorrow it may be the son of any Argentine family," he added. "Already, there have been around 40 such cases in less than two months, and the number keeps going up." "It's a horror for a family to see itself forced to pay the mutilating executioners of their own son," the father said.

Cabinet chief Fernandez acknowledged that "the social unrest which gives rise to these sorts of episodes is enormous" and that "actual businesses have been set up for just this sort of crime," something Argentine criminologists have also noted.

Argentina's economic meltdown has been accompanied by a serious crime wave, and kidnappers seeking to extort money from victims' families have become Public Enemy No. 1.

Along these lines, a recent poll conducted by the D'Alessio Irol consulting firm revealed that 87.9 percent of the inhabitants of Argentina's major cities live with the fear of being abducted.

"I've lived in fear, I've lived in fear, and I'll continue living in fear due to the lack of security," businessman Roberto Sanchez told reporters Wednesday, upon being freed by police after having spent nine days as a hostage.

Sanchez had been held in a parking lot in downtown Buenos Aires.

Shortly after his release, two of his alleged captors were arrested.

Police on Wednesday arrested three other people shortly after they had abducted a businessman just outside Buenos Aires, home of the nation's highest crime rate.

Belluscio's case has stirred public opinion in the wake of a string of kidnappings of soccer players' relatives in recent months.

The president of the Buenos Aires bar association, Roberto Durrieu, on Wednesday decried the lack of law enforcement officers "to protect the populace." Durrieu told Radio 10 that it would take years for authorities to "begin to bring down the gang leaders.

"At the same time, it's already too late, because the (police) commanders are also involved in the gangs, as is the vast majority of the people working for them," he added. The country's largest police force - that of Buenos Aires province - "is absolutely corrupt," he said.

Twenty-four senior Buenos Aires police officers have been under investigation since mid-October, including former chief Alberto Sobrado, said to be the owner of mansions and enterprises worth millions of dollars.