Sean O’Neill, Adam Fresco, Russell Jenkins
March 22, 2010

Apart from the severe haircut given to Sahil Saeed by his kidnappers, there are few remaining outward signs of the little boy’s ordeal in Pakistan. The camera crews have gone from outside his family’s terraced house in Shaw, Oldham. Inside, Sahil, five, is said to have been playing with his sisters as if nothing had happened.

But for Britain’s large Pakistani community, the Punjab kidnapping — despite its happy ending — will have huge repercussions.

More than 400,000 people travel to Pakistan every year — to visit relatives, attend weddings and see their ancestral villages. Many are now coming to the realisation that the country they regard as their homeland has become unsafe to visit.

It is not only the random and violent threat of terrorism that is frightening, but the increasing possibility that they and their children will be identified as targets for kidnapping gangs.

The Times has learnt that, of 25 international kidnappings of Britons reported to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) last year, 19 occurred in Pakistan. The figure is almost double that of 2008, when ten abductions were notified to Soca.

“The victims are British nationals or Britons with dual nationality who are, more often than not, going back to their roots,” said a source.

“They are unfamiliar with their surroundings, they might never have been there before, or perhaps not for 20 years. But they are perceived, because they come from the UK, as having money.”

Criminal kidnappings — those conducted for money rather than political motives — are reported to be on the rise globally, with Pakistan just one of the countries where incidents have become more frequent. Lloyd’s insurance market says that the kidnap situation worldwide “could be set to deteriorate as the global recession continues to bite”.

Control Risks, the security specialist, has identified a shift in activity, from Latin America to Asia. In 2003, 65 per cent of reported kidnaps were in Latin America. By 2009 that had fallen to 37 per cent with Asian kidnappings making up 36 per cent (compared with 19 per cent six years before).

The perception of wealth that lies behind the British-Pakistani kidnap phenomenon is usually mistaken. Few of the victims’ families are well-off and, when ransoms are raised, they have to depend on help from their local community.

The kidnaps rarely make headlines. Before Sahil’s case, the victims in this new crime trend had almost all been adults. Many abductions were resolved quickly in Pakistan before the authorities were informed.

Investigators make no criticism of families for such actions because they share the belief that the safe release of the hostage is the priority. They also know that kidnapping gangs regard their hostage as a commodity and that there are frequent cases of the victim being sold on if demands are not dealt with quickly.

British police and agencies such as Soca become involved in overseas investigations only when there is a demand from the kidnappers for the ransom to be paid here. When Sahil’s kidnappers made their demand for £110,000 and instructed his businessman father, Raja Saeed, 28, to return to Britain to get the money, it created an opportunity to solve the case.

Pakistani officials created a false trail to deceive the kidnap gang — dropping hints to the media that the boy’s family might be implicated in the plot. In reality, Mr Saeed returned to Manchester Airport to be met by Soca operatives and Greater Manchester Police officers, with whom he would co-operate to crack the case.

While the British Government has a policy of not meeting ransom demands in political kidnappings, police view the kidnappers’ greed as their biggest weakness.

The police do not give families money to be paid to kidnappers, but they do not discourage them from raising it and will “facilitate” the handover negotiations.

In Sahil’s case that meant French undercover police discreetly tailing Tauseer Ahmad, the boy’s uncle, for two days as he walked the streets of Paris with a trolley suitcase packed with used notes awaiting instructions from the gang.

The kidnappers were also watching, telling Ahmad to keep moving from park to hotel to fast-food outlet as they checked to see that he wasn’t accompanied by police. Eventually he was told to leave the bag on a park bench. The police then watched as a man and a woman picked it up. They would wait until it was confirmed that Sahil was free before moving in. By then, the ransom had been driven across the border and Spanish police had taken over surveillance.

The arrests were made in Constanti, near the holiday resort of Salou in northeastern Spain, an area with a growing Pakistani population.

“Quite a lot of ransoms are paid,” said a source, “but it is very, very rare that we lose the money. The biggest risk the criminals take is when they collect the money, and we aim to exploit that risk.”

In one recent British-Pakistani kidnap, where a sizeable ransom demand was made, the operation ended with an armed raid by Soca and police on a Holiday Inn close to the M1, where the criminals were toasting their success with champagne.

Specialist insurers and security firms say Pakistan is not alone in having a mounting kidnapping problem.

“Not only has the number of countries harbouring serial kidnap groups expanded, but so has the range of victim profiles and demands,” says Control Risks’ RiskMap 2009.

Richard Scurrell, divisional director of Special Contingency Risks, which specialises in kidnap insurance, says: “Countries that did not previously have an endemic kidnap problem are developing one.

“We are seeing a growing problem in countries where five or six years ago there wasn’t a problem, such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Soca reports an increase in the kidnapping of expatriate visitors to Bangladesh as well as Pakistan. The agency has also issued an official warning about a surge in kidnaps in South Africa, where people have been lured by the promise of investment opportunities only to be abducted and held for ransom.

Its anti-kidnap Unit reported another new trend in January, when a Briton was lured to Nigeria after establishing a romantic online relationship, only to be held hostage for four days until a ransom was paid.

According to Lloyd’s, kidnapping is on the rise “where political instability, social deprivation and weak or corrupt law enforcement offer fertile conditions for the crime to flourish”.

As Pakistan’s political and security problems persist, the kidnapping threat there is likely to continue to rise.

One sign of hope, detected by British sources, is the willingness of Pakistani police to co-operate with international inquiries.

The Sahil Saeed investigation has now moved into the “intelligence phase” — the forensic examination of telephones, computers and other material seized from those arrested.

Sahil’s ordeal may be over, but the investigation continues and those leading it believe that the rigorous pursuit of kidnappers is the key deterrent to a crime that is threatening to become a global epidemic.

__________________
You cannot hate a person when you know him