The children’s mother, a Spanish national living in the Latin American country, was arrested prior to their kidnapping when she was trying to sell a kilo of cocaine in her home region of Murcia.

According to Spanish daily El Mundo, she had already made €16,000 from drug sales.

The kidnappers, thought to be local drug traffickers, took the two children from a family they were staying with in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz as a way of guaranteeing they would be fully reimbursed for the drugs after the mother’s arrest.

The woman’s partner, also a local drug dealer, allowed the captors to take the newborn and his brother.

A Spanish National Police team specializing in kidnappings and extortion travelled to Bolivia to help local authorities with the investigation.

Another monitored the mother’s entourage telephone activity from Spain to monitor communication between both sides.

According to the biological father of the 11-year-old boy, an Ecuadorian resident in Spain, dozens of phone calls from Bolivia were made to him by the captors, demanding that the money be paid back.

After a week of captivity, police located the children and arrested their four captors.

Earlier in March, the story of a Barcelona girl who was held captive by a friend of her parents in the depths of the Amazon made international headlines.

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