Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Ransom Notes...
...great contrast to the price of an African life, the life of an executive at the Sanyo Corporation is worth $2 million. In August 1996, according to CNN, kidnappers in Tijuana, Mexico, released Mamoru Konno after his company paid the $2 million ransom they were demanding. In other words, his life is worth as much money as 10,000 African lives. When lives are put in stark terms of cash value—one life the victim of extortionists and the other the victim of cruel circumstance—the disparity in “value” is shockingly...
...following a tradition going back to the very first heist at Russborough House, in 1974. That caper, pulled off by a Provisional i.r.a. gang, was led by Rose Dugdale, an English millionaire's daughter turned republican rebel. The gang did want some money - over $200,000, according to the ransom note - but its real objective was to trade the paintings for the release of Dolours and Marion Price, sisters who were jailed for life on explosives charges and were on hunger strike in London's Brixton jail. The Dugdale gang took 19 paintings, including a Goya, a Vermeer...
...federal charges were filed under the Hobbs Act, a 1946 corruption law which forbids the use of extortion (that $10 million ransom note found after the Ashland, Virginia shooting) and the interruption of interstate commerce. Not exactly sexy stuff, but designed to ensure relatively speedy justice to alleged criminals who have the poor sense to commit their crimes without regard to state lines - and provides the death penalty for those found guilty. As a juvenile, the 17-year-old Malvo is eligible for execution only if he's found guilty in Virginia and Alabama; Maryland and federal statutes forbid...
...sought to burnish her tough-on-terrorism image by appearing on television with arrested suspects. One such photo-op, on Oct. 19, however, went badly awry when Arroyo marched out a prisoner and introduced him as Abu Pula or "Doctor Abu," a forty-something leader of the kidnap-for-ransom group Abu Sayyaf, who allegedly engineered the 2000 abduction of 11 European tourists from a Malaysian beach resort. Alas, the perp she walked wasn't Doctor Abu: he was Mark Bolkerin Gumbahale, a 21-year-old Abu Sayyaf member arrested while playing video games at an Internet cafe...