German Garcia-Velutini got into his car and left work one day. It took him 11 months to get home.
Kidnappers had nabbed the Venezuelan banker. His abduction is part of a problem that's been getting worse every year for the past decade in Venezuela, which belongs to a region riddled with crime and the most violent cities in the world.
Gracia-Velutini tells his story at an outdoor table at a hotel in Caracas, the capital, with a view of a mountainside that climbs into the clouds.
He recalls his departure from work that fateful day in 2009, which took him as usual to a highway ramp, where he had to hit the brakes.
"It was like a stopover by what I thought were policemen because of their jackets," he says. "They had long guns, automatic rifles."
Garcia-Velutini is a trim man, with glasses and a mild expression that matches his mild tone as he describes learning the men were not police.
"They took me out of the car and pushed me into another vehicle and injected me" in the thigh, he recalls.
"I passed [out] in seconds. ... When I woke up, I was being pushed in a small room. They took all my clothes," he says, leaving him only with a T-shirt and underwear.
The banker had fallen into the hands of professional kidnappers, who held him for months as they demanded ransom from his family.
"They were very proud of what they were doing. They took pride in their profession," says Garcia-Velutini, who came to that conclusion because of the kidnappers' elaborate techniques.
They kept him in one windowless room. Music played constantly so he would hear nothing from outside. Cameras followed his every move. He never saw his kidnappers, who pushed food and notes for him through a sort of doggy door.
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