Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rebels say that the ambush was provoked by a military offensive the day before in which a local ustadz, or religious mentor, his wife and two children died. (The military is silent on that story.) The rebels include members of Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaeda linked kidnap-for-ransom group, and renegades of the Moro National Liberation Front (M.N.L.F.), a Muslim group that once fought for a separate state. The military estimates the rebels' numbers at 800. By the end of the week, the armed forces had sent seven battalions?roughly 3,000 soldiers?to the island...
...alive; a satellite had picked up the sound of their voices. Letta played the crackling tape to the opposition politicians. They agreed it was better to negotiate with the hostage takers, who realized they'd been discovered, than to launch a military blitz. Though it fueled suspicions that a ransom was paid (which the government has denied), Letta believed a negotiated handover would help the young women get home safely, which was what mattered most. And keeping the opposition in the loop would provide political cover. "All of the most delicate negotiations," says one Berlusconi ally, "have the stamp...
...Even without such scenarios, piracy in the Strait of Malacca is already exacting a human toll. "It's becoming more and more violent," says Noel Choong, director of the IMB's Piracy Reporting Centre. The cause is an outbreak of kidnapping for ransom by pirates in the strait, which most recently saw four sailors spirited away from a tugboat in October (two of the men are still missing). In the worst such incident, off the coast of northern Sumatra, four crew members were killed in January after negotiations between their kidnappers and the ship's owners broke down. "We have...
...jungle clearing to the next each night, and hidden away during the day in the thick forest. One morning, Teh was finally bundled onto a boat and dropped off at gunpoint on a passing fishing vessel that returned him to Malaysia. (Teh and his family insist that no ransom was paid...
...mind. He will fight for a nickel, and mind every penny." (If anybody doubted how good a dealmaker or student of risk Lampert was, he proved it in January of last year, when he was kidnapped. He talked his captors, who were holding him for a $1 million ransom, into letting him go with the promise he would pay them $40,000 a few days later...