[not verified in body] It was followed by an almost immediate police rescue that revealed that among the kidnappers were Chileans, Argentinians and two Canadians: David Spencer and Christine Lamont, both students at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
They used their Canadian passports and contacts to rent a number of apartments in preparation for the next victim, the principal shareholder of Brazil's largest supermarket chain, Abilio Diniz.
[2] While the family of Diniz was negotiating payment of a $5 million ransom, the police stormed the house in São Paulo where he was held.
[1] In 1989, using false passports, the two traveled to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua making contact with various left wing groups including the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.
[1] Christine Lamont was born in 1959 (age 65–66) in Langley, British Columbia and a student at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in the late 1980s.
The two became involved in Latin American solidarity activism, supporting left-wing movements like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas in El Salvador.
First, trial transcripts show that the two had rented two houses in São Paulo using false passports and letters of reference.
[4] Lamont and Spencer continued to maintain their innocence, however, their story started to unravel four years later when a secret weapons cache in Managua exploded (the Sandinistas had lost power by this point).
In November 1998 after a hunger strike by the pair, the Brazilian government accused them of violating "good behaviour" and refused to release them to Canadian authorities.