Flawless Rescue

How a kidnaping was foiled

The FBI agents waited and watched for days outside a rundown apartment building in Washington, D.C. Finally, at 10 p.m. last Thursday, their chance came. Clelia Eleanor Quinonez, 53, surrounded by three of her captors, walked out of the building and across the street to a phone booth, where she was to call her husband and assure him that she was unharmed. The agents moved in swiftly, arrested the trio and freed Quinonez, the wife of a former Salvadoran ambassador, who had been kidnaped from her home in Florida a week earlier. "I was flabbergasted," she said, praising the FBI's flawless rescue, which was executed before any ransom was paid. "It was just like watching TV, like Eliot Ness."

A gang of Central Americans and Americans was allegedly responsible for the kidnaping. Three of them had waited in the bushes to grab their victim as she pulled her Mercedes into the driveway of the Quinonez home in the wealthy Miami suburb of Coral Gables. They then drove her to the hideaway in Washington. Calling from telephone booths in Miami and Washington, they negotiated with her husband, Export-Import Dealer Roberto Quinonez Meza, for a ransom of $1.5 million. Disobeying the kidnapers' orders, Quinonez had notified the FBI the first day of the abduction and had taken calls from the kidnapers in the FBI's Miami field office. By wiretapping the calls, the bureau was able to pin down the location of the hideaway. When the kidnapers acceded to his demands that his wife call him from an outside telephone to prove that she was still alive, the FBI trap was set.

By late last week ten suspects had been arrested, including a low-level Guatemalan diplomat, eight people from the Washington area and two Miami residents. Dora Ileana Caceres, 32, third secretary in the Guatemalan mission to the Organization of American States, her husband Juan, a businessman, and her nephew were arrested after her diplomatic status was rescinded by Guatemala following consultations with the State Department.

The Quinonezes were members of the "14 families," the wealthy oligarchs who controlled El Salvador's economy and military until 1979. Roberto Quinonez Meza was Ambassador to the U.S. from 1977 to 1979, when General Carlos Humberto Romero was overthrown in a coup. Quinonez moved to Miami, where he has been outspoken in opposition to Communism in Central America. But the FBI was skeptical that the kidnaping was politically motivated. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.