Santo Domingo. - Police investigators have linked the little known organization “Solidarity Nation” to at least five kidnappings since 2000, including the latest, Eduardo Baldera, son of a businessman in Nagua (north).

Among the group’s alleged ringleaders was Cecilio Diaz, killed Saturday together with William Batista alias Checo, after Baldera’s escape from the house in which he was held near the town Villa Vásques.

Two rap sheets quoted by news source listin.com.do identify Diaz with the aliases Manuel, Sibilio or Lilo, and as a “guerrilla in El Salvador” and linked to two other kidnappings, one in November, 2005 called the Gringo Case, in Santiago, and another in San Francisco, or the Lantigua Case, in November last year, as well as assaults and robberies of exchange houses, banks and other businesses.

He’s considered “founder and leader of the subversive movement Gregorio Luperón” and has actively participated in several leftist organizations in the past.

In Batista’s rap sheet, also alias Ramon, he figures in a bank robbery and an attempted kidnapping in 1996 and as part of the group Gregorio Luperón and of the nationwide organization Falpo, known for staging violent strikes.

The investigators say the MO in Baldera’s kidnapping is similar to the four previous ones. The kidnappers had handcuffs, guns, compasses, military garb and forged documents.

A comparison of five kidnappings; the Ulerio Case in San Francisco in August 2000, the Capellan Case, in Santiago, in August 2002, the Gringo Case, in November 2005, the Lantigua Case in San Francisco in November 2008 and the Baldera Case shows the following similarities:

- They took place between the months August and November in a defined territorial line, from Santiago to Nagua.

- They were perpetrated at night between 8 and 9 p.m..

 - In all there was a ransom demand of an average of 3 million dollars, although RS$1.5 million was paid for Ulerio; US$1.1 million for Capellan; RD$3 million for Lantigua and nothing for el Gringo and Baldera.

- The five kidnappings were in residences, with the use of stolen vehicles, military garb, assault rifles and violence.

- In all five cases they left cassettes with the voice of the victim as “proof of life” for their relatives, called from public telephones and at the end of the ordeal, used  cell phones, in some cases acquired to make just one call to thwart being located by Police.