Word: kidnapping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...latest stupor. It might be her recovering-alcoholic friend Mitch (Saul Rubinek), who keeps trying to straighten her out. Or it might be her neighbor Elena (Kate del Castillo), who has hatched a goofy plan to retrieve her estranged son Tom (Aidan Gould) - if only Julia will, sort of, kidnap...
...opening moments in the trial of 27 youths accused of involvement in the February 2006 abduction, persecution and murder of Halimi, the anti-Semitic attitude and motivations of alleged gang leader Youssouf Fofana became quite clear. Previously, Fofana had told police he and his cohorts had chosen to kidnap Halimi for ransom because the victim and his family were Jews and therefore, Fofana believed, had to be rich. But once in court, Fofana sought to frame his behavior in jihadist language: after shouting "Allahu akbar" at the court, for example, Fofana gave his name as "Arabs, African, Revolt, Armed, Barbarian...
...sometimes hung from bridges and overpasses. A mass grave holding nine corpses was recently discovered outside the city, and in November students found seven bullet-torn bodies outside their elementary school. The next month, the narcos even began extorting Christmas-bonus money from teachers, warning they'd kidnap pupils unless they were paid...
...addition, insurance brokers and some officials say governments themselves sometimes pay ransoms - especially on land in kidnap-heavy countries like Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela - despite insisting that they do not. In 2001, for example, the Dutch government paid $1 million to free a doctor working for the aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who had been kidnapped by Chechen rebels; the government later tried to recoup the money from MSF. "Ransoms are certainly being paid," Antonia Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, said in an e-mail on Friday. "Of course...
Rather than governments trying to ban ransom payments - which could be futile - Costa suggests trying to choke off the flow of money pirates and kidnap gangs receive. "They may move some of their money offshore, using the hawala [underground banking] system and through third parties, particularly in financial centers where shipping companies are located." Costa and Clinton have also said that shipping and insurance companies should work on developing Somalia, rather than simply paying ransoms - a suggestion that insurance brokers reject. "It's not down to insurance companies to promote peace in Somalia," says Cooper Gay's Regester. "That...