Nick Paton Walsh blogs from Islamabad on the latest details of the kidnap of five-year-old Sahil Saeed, and questions that still remain unanswered.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police are still hunting two or more locally based accomplices of the “international and organised gang” they say meticulously planned the kidnap of Sahil Saeed.
Aslam Tareen, the senior police officer in the town of Jehlum where the five-year-old was taken, described to Channel Four News today the kidnap as being the work of professionals and admitted Pakistani police still had no-one in their custody.
Further details of the kidnappers’ tactics have emerged as the boy at the centre of the 13 day ordeal, Sahil Saeed, was reunited with his father Raja in the grounds of the British High Commission here in Islamabad.
The boy is flying back to Manchester today with his father who has yet to comment on the kidnap’s resolution bar a short statement expressing his gratitude to British and Pakistani police today.
It appears the boy was dropped off by kidnappers in the village of Kharian, near Dingha in the Punjabi region, at dawn on Wednesday.
Police arrived on the scene a few hours later to collect the child after being telephoned by the boy’s father, who was in the UK but knew of his whereabouts, Mr Tareen said.
Witnesses said they found the child with a shaven head and one shoe, wearing the ID card of his grandmother around his neck. The police had been given exact details as to where they could find him.
Spanish police have said the kidnappers asked the boy’s father to hand over the ransom in Paris and then fled to Spain where they were later arrested.
These 3 arrests yesterday, and the recovery of £105,000 ransom money have helped clear up much of the mystery around the case.
Police here – who at first encouraged the boy’s father, Mr Saeed, to stay in Pakistan, prompting press speculation he was somehow helping in their inquiries – now say they do not suspect the family of any involvement.
Yet there remain some outstanding questions over the case: If a ransom was paid, as Pakistani officials now say, then how did Mr Saeed obtain the money so quickly and who from?
Who are the two or more Pakistani accomplices of the suspects arrested in Spain?
And why did the gang – clearly resourced enough to work across four different countries – target the family of an unemployed man from Manchester?