Canadian Kidnapped in Haiti has Checkered Past

Canadian kidnapped in Haiti has checkered past
CanWest News Service; National Post

A Canadian man who has been kidnapped in Haiti after recently being shot in another abduction incident appears to have gone from running a bawdy house in Ontario to running an orphanage in his adopted land.

Kidnappers are demanding a $100,000 US ransom and are threatening to kill Edward Brian Hughes, according to Nelson Ryman, co-director of the Tytoo Gardens orphanage in the village of Simonette, near Port-au-Prince.

On the advice of the United Nations and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, no ransom will be paid, he said.

Hughes, 72, was recently involved in another kidnapping attempt that cost him his right arm. He was shot when kidnappers snatched Daniel Thelusmar, a Florida-based missionary delivering supplies to the orphanage, in December. The pair’s truck was surrounded by a gang armed with M-16s in Port-au-Prince.

Hughes was abandoned at the side of the road after being shot. His arm was later amputated about six inches below the shoulder. Thelusmar was released after his supporters paid a $10,000 US ransom.

After that incident, supporters urged Hughes to leave Haiti because of increasing violence.

“To go where?,” a Haitian radio station’s website quotes him as saying. “My life is in Haiti with my children. Who will take care of them if I go? I would be ashamed to leave them over such a little thing.”

Ryman said he thinks the kidnappings are linked.

“This is twice now in six months that he has been a victim of this kind of stuff,” Ryman said from his home in Zephyrhills, Fla.

“What’s to say that if they turn him loose today, if they were paid a ransom, that they won’t (kidnap) him back again saying they want another $100,000 US? Where does it stop?”

Thelusmar, who speaks Creole, is now helping to communicate with the kidnappers, Ryman said. He is convinced the two events are related.

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs said the department is keeping in touch with Hughes’ family and friends but would not provide any further details.

Hughes appears to have led a colourful and varied life. A man of the same name and age ran a bawdy house for adventuresome couples near Hamilton, Ont., that was raided by police in July 1981. The operation was run inside a circus tent. Nearly 100 swingers were charged in the raid.

That Hughes and his wife, Jeanette, were originally convicted and fined $3,000. The Ontario Court of Appeal later upheld the finding of guilt but granted absolute discharges to the couple. Hughes would not have had a record for a criminal conviction and would have been free to travel internationally.

A lawyer who represented Hughes in the case Wednesday viewed a photograph of the orphanage worker held hostage in Haiti and recognized him.

“It appears to me to be the same person who was my client,” Michael Caroline said.

How Hughes would have gone from operating a bawdy house to an orphanage is not clear. A 1988 press report said the Hughes had “traded their campground for a boat and headed for the Caribbean.” Indeed, Caroline ran into his former client on a plane headed for the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti, in the late 1980s.

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