An Italian businessman has been freed after five days in the hands of a kidnap gang in Venezuela.
Guido Mancini, 53, a petrochemicals operator, thanked his kidnappers for letting him walk away without having to pay a ransom.
His account contradicted an earlier reconstruction which said Venezuelan police freed him.
Mancini was kidnapped last week in Cabimas, 300 miles west of Caracas.
In July a 70-year-old Italian engineer, Guglielmo Marangoni, was murdered at his home by three men who hid his body in a water cistern in the Venezuelan town of Porto Fijo.
