A ransom for a five-year-old British boy kidnapped during a family holiday in Pakistan and freed this week was paid in Paris, Spanish police said on Wednesday, as five people were detained.
A Pakistani man and a Romanian woman who traveled to the French capital to collect a ransom of £110,000 (US$168,000) from the boy’s uncle were arrested on Tuesday in the town of Constanti in northeastern Spain, they said.
Another Pakistani man was also arrested in Constanti while French police detained two family members of the man who went to Paris for being accomplices. They had put up the couple at their apartment in the French capital.
The authorities made the arrests once they were informed that Sahil Saeed had been released in Pakistan and was safe, the head of Spanish police’s economic and violent crime unit, commander Serafin Castro.
“For obvious reasons we could not proceed before but the suspects were being monitored the entire time,” he told a news conference in Madrid.
The couple arrested in Spain told the boy’s uncle by cell phone to come to France from Britain and lay a backpack containing the ransom money on a sidewalk in the center of Paris and then promptly picked it up, he said.
They then drove to their apartment in Constanti where the third suspect arrested in Spain helped them remove the ransom money from their car.
Police found nearly £104,000 and more than 3,000 euros (US4,100) in the apartment as well as several cell telephones, including one which was used to make calls to the boy’s uncle in Paris, and a new computer.
The couple who traveled to Paris to collect the ransom money had been charged with murder and were on provisional release while they awaited their trial at the time of their arrest.
They had “knowledge of certain police practices” because they had worked for Spanish police before being arrested for murder, said Castro without providing further details.
Police in Pakistan said the kidnappers had dropped off Saeed in a field on Tuesday, allowing officers to recover him, but no arrests were made.
He was taken from his grandmother’s house in the town of Jhelum in the early hours of March 4 while preparing to leave to fly back to Britain.
Castro said four men armed with grenades and Kalashnikov assault rifles stormed the house and tied up all the family members as well as the driver of a taxi which had just arrived to make the trip to the airport before leaving with the boy.
They beat up Saeed’s father and threw a two-year-old boy in the house at the time against a wall during their assualt, he added.
The four men also stole jewels, cash, mobile phones and other valuables from the house before leaving in the taxi which they later abandoned.
Saeed’s mother Akila Naqqash said on Tuesday that she had spoken to her son by telephone from her home near Manchester, after his release and he could expect a “big party” when he arrives back from Pakistan.
“I need to see him with my own eyes to believe it. When he comes back I am going to give him a big kiss and cuddles and keep him happy,” she told the Manchester Evening News city newspaper.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
RSS