http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/kidnappers-demand-iphones-us20000-6.2.765092.a128f808fd

Last Sat­ur­day’s dead­line for the pay­ment of a US$40,000 ran­som has come and gone for the safe re­turn of Moru­ga cousins Kendall Singh and Ken­rick Mor­gan from Venezuela.

How­ev­er, their kid­nap­pers have rene­go­ti­at­ed their de­mands and are now call­ing for US$20,000 and five iPhones. 

Kendall’s broth­er, Pe­ter Singh, told Guardian Me­dia that he got a call from Kendall last Sun­day, say­ing that he and Mor­gan were all right, but need­ed the mon­ey for the safe re­turn from their Venezue­lan ab­duc­tors. 

He then spoke to the kid­nap­per, who de­mand­ed the cash and cell phones by Wednes­day. Pe­ter said the kid­nap­per was sup­posed to call back on Wednes­day, but up to noon Thurs­day, the fam­i­lies had no con­tact with them.

Mean­while, the fam­i­lies were busi­ly call­ing rel­a­tives and friends, hop­ing to raise enough mon­ey to pay the kid­nap­pers. But they were los­ing hope as Pe­ter said mon­ey is hard to come by for his fam­i­ly and US cur­ren­cy would be even hard­er.

“I spoke to the youth man and my broth­er. As long as the kid­nap­per call, I want to hear from them be­cause I need to know that they are alive. On Sun­day, I spoke to my broth­er, my lit­tle cousin and a Span­ish man who speaks Eng­lish. The Span­ish man told me ‘Al­lyuh or­gan­ise the mon­ey and we want five iPhones.’ I said right now we are scrap­ing up be­cause we don’t have that mon­ey they’ve asked for,” Pe­ter said.

Usu­al­ly, the kid­nap­per would call via What­sApp but on Sun­day, Pe­ter got the phone call from a Dig­i­cel phone. He said be­cause the riv­er month in Venezuela is so close to Trinidad, you can get a sig­nal while on a boat.

Po­lice said they were al­so await­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of the men, but it is an in­ter­na­tion­al or­deal that would in­volve oth­er au­thor­i­ties.

Their re­port stat­ed that on Jan­u­ary 12, Kendall, a 23-year-old fish­er­man of Basse Terre, and Mor­gan, 17, of Grand Chemin, a Form Five stu­dent of the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, were fish­ing off the Moru­ga coast. 

They were kid­napped and tak­en to Venezuela.