Word: ransome
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...killed at least 100 people and driven thousands more to join the country's swelling refugee population - already estimated at more than 1.5 million. Meanwhile, aid groups have found themselves targets in the fighting across the country, from the north, where foreign reporters and volunteers have been held for ransom by gangs, to the south, where they've been executed to show the low regard their Islamist captors have for the West...
...most recent high-profile incidence of piracy off the lawless coast of Somalia appears to have ended well for everyone but the pirates. After holding the French luxury yacht Ponant for a week and allegedly securing a $2 million ransom from its owner, a band of Somali marauders headed for shore on April 11 with its booty. That's when French navy commandos pounced to free the 30-man crew and, in a dramatic helicopter raid, hunt down the six pirates. They now await charges in Paris...
...examining alleged similarities between the case and a storyline from a British television drama series, Shameless, shown less than a month before the 9-year-old vanished. In that episode, the head of a dysfunctional family staged a fake kidnap of his son in an attempt to obtain a ransom...
...munitions and materials, training new recruits, and abducting and holding any kidnap victims. Indeed, officials are virtually certain AQIM has transported Kloiber and Ebner to northern Mali or southern Algeria, the same area where the GSPC kept 31 captured European tourists hidden in 2003 until Germany allegedly paid a ransom). But because AQIM action is driven in part by the need for ransom payments, French officials hope these terrorists are less prone to committing the beheadings of valuable hostages that has become the gruesome trademark of other terrorists in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan...
...terrorism - bombings, shootings, logistics, organization and recruitment - they now need to show they can humiliate and intimidate the enemy through kidnapping too," says a French intelligence official. "They also know abducting Westerners draws lots of media attention to them, and more often than not ends up with big ransom payments that help fund more jihadist activity...