Kidnapped boys rescued in Chile

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33155, 20 February 1973, Page 13

Kidnapped boys rescued in Chile

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SANTIAGO, Feb. 19.

The West German Consul Honorary in the southern Chile province of Osorno has rescued his two grandnephews from a Marx-ist-occupied farm, using a small aircraft, according to reports reaching Santiago.

But the parents of the boys, Mr Claudio Zaldumbide, son of a former French Consular agent in Osorno, and his wife, Elenita, niece of West .German Honorary Consul, Mr Helmuth Schilling, remain captives, the reports add.

Several other farm families are also reported to be held i against their will on four farms which were occupied last Tuesday by some 80 (members of the M.A.P.U.. a ! small Marxist party within ! President Allende’s Leftist Icoalition Government.

! No reason has been given ! for the occupation of the ! farms, but such seizures have (been common in southern Chile since Dr Allende came ! to office in 1970. He instigated an ambitious agrarian

reform programme in which more than four million acres of farmland have been brought under State control in little more than two years. A number of Leftist groups have seized small farms exempt from agrarian reform because they want all land to be owned by the State. The police have usually done nothing about it. According to dispatches from correspondents for two Santiago Opposition newspapers, Mr Schilling managed to rescue the boys, Jorge, aged 11, and Andres, aged 12, in a small singleengined aircraft by landing on; a meadow near one of the] seized farms. A similar at-1 tempt was thwarted on Thursday, when gunfire' forced the pilot to take off: again.

Both the West German and French Embassies in Santiago say that they are aware of the situation in the south, and are in touch with the Chilean authorities.

However, Mr Daniel Vergara, Under Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior. Chile’s chief law-enforcement office, has denied the reports. “Nobody has been kidnap-! ped,” he said. “The information is not true.”