A Classic Case of International Intelligence-Gathering – and then Scoring a Success

Sahil Saeed was a normal 5-year-old British boy, born to a British Pakistani mother and a Pakistani father, who went on holiday in Punjab, Pakistan two weeks back. He may have never thought that the last day of his holiday in rural Pakistan would turn into the worst nightmare, a human being could ever endure, let alone a little one.

A gang of kidnappers, as the story unfolds, broke into his grandmother’s house, looked for the ‘English boy’, adducted him at gunpoint and then made the demand known to Sahil’s father – a ransom of £100000, equivalent to Rs 15 million, to be handed down in a European Capitol.

Initially, the local media didn’t seem to be interested in the case. The reason is very simple. It is fairly common in rural Pakistan; so, this was yet another story of a child being kidnapped or even grieving parents over it. So, why bother?

However, the sensationalism gathered momentum after the victim was identified as a British Citizen. The British High Commission in Pakistan not only got involved in the case, but also used its influence on notoriously lethargic rural police force who has been handling the case.

For the police force in question, it was just abduction. As a sheer display of incompetence or lack of judgement, they built a case of an ‘inside job’ – the involvement of some family member in the heinous act. Not only did they make it known to the public, but also got the interior minister on their side; the latter even made an announcement to that effect – placing himself at the centre of embarrassing headlines.

In the mean time, Saheel’s father, Raja, has made contact with the British Police in Manchester, possibly through the British High Commission in Islamabad. The police seems to have handled the case brilliantly: Raja returned to England to ‘make’ the ransom money that the culprits had been demanding; the police may have came up with a plan to trap the monsters in the act; Raja agreed to pay the amount in cash in Paris at a pre-arranged location; the British detectives, had been briefing their French counterparts with the rapidly-ongoing-developments so that they could track the individuals accurately by using the most modern surveillance equipment and plain-clothed detectives.

So, the three kidnappers have met Saheel’s father at the centre of Paris on the agreed day just to collect the ransom and have since disappeared after collecting the bounty.What they didn’t know, however, was that their movements, conversations and whereabouts had been monitoring meticulously in Paris, while leaving very little room for them to manoeuvre; as far as the boy was concerned, it was a life or death situation, as kidnappers had made it clear the absence of money means boy’s death. As soon as they left the French soil, the case has been handed down to Spanish authority.

The inability to detain the three in French soil is due to the fact the police team wanted to get the boy released first. Then the news came that Saheel had been abandoned in a field in his village only to wander around with just a single shoe in his foot. When the detectives knew that the boy was in safe hands, they executed the final phase of the operation; the Spanish police broke into the apartment of the kidnappers and arrested the three along with the cash. They were two Pakistanis and a Romanian woman.

The case highlights the latent dangers lurking in Pakistan, in addition to Taliban inspired violence. Moderate British Pakistanis, when they visit their dear and near ones, feel sandwiched between the Islamic extremism – and its numerous tentacles – and endless crimes bred by abject poverty, social deprivation and illiteracy, especially in the rural areas. Once again, the way Pakistani police handled the case got themselves under an enviable spotlight.

Their premature announcement of ‘inside job’was more than the interior minister putting his foot in it; it was a monumental PR disaster.

At present there are hundreds of Pakistani mothers who have gone through the nightmare. Unfortunately, they don’t hold British passports; nor do they know a single soul who could speak on their behalf. So, they just suffer in silence while expecting a miracle from high heavens.

The irony in the cases of this kind is the apathy of the village elders who wields substantial power in the rural-setup of Pakistan in tackling the problem. If a woman commits adultery or a girl falls in love with the wrong man, these people don’t hesitate to unleash the most severe punishment on hapless women in the form of beatings, gang rape or even death. If the victims ended up with death, they call it karo-kari – honour killing!

Kudos go to the British, French and Spanish police forces who successfully caught an international gang, literary, at the height of a vile act, after carrying out a very effective collective operation beyond their borders. Pakistani police can learn a lesson from this operation and then bring relief to hundreds of peasants who have had their children abducted in similar circumstance; lack of British contacts should not be a hindrance against getting their moral bearings right.

- Asian Tribune -