Chilling threat of Sahil captors

Family living in shadow of fear

Little Sahil Saeed may never be safe from his brutal kidnappers.

That’s the verdict of his brave Shaw father Raja Naqqash Saeed who has revealed how he faced sickening threats from the gang.

They told him they would dismember his son and send him the body parts in black bin bags unless the £110,000 was paid.

Behind the smiles and joy which greeted five-year-old Sahil’s return home to Queen Street on Thursday, Raja revealed that even after the ransom money was dropped off in Paris, there was a last chilling phone message from the boy’s captors.

They told him that if he ever got help from the police, the gang had contacts all over Europe and added: “We can do anything with you in Europe and we can do anything back home with your parents in Pakistan.”

Rushcroft Primary School pupil Sahil, was was snatched on March 4 by a heavily armed gang as he was leaving his grandmother’s home in Jhelum, in the Punjab region of Pakistan.

Mother Akila was kept in the dark on police instructions and only spoke to her husband once as family members and the media kept her up to date hour by hour.

It was two days before the gang contacted Raja and began with a demand for £200,000. When he asked for proof his son was alive they promised him any part of his son -—in a black bin bag.

Raja’s pleading reduced the demand to £110,000 and he flew to England on March 9, when Greater Manchester Police say he went to a safe house. Akila was still none the wiser, but Raja was getting three or four calls a day from kidnappers, trying to lure him to cities all over the world to pay up.

He convinced them he could not travel with a Pakistani passport — however he had a friend who could pay the money in Paris.

Raja added: “They said they would cut things off my son if I didn’t do what they wanted — arms, fingers, ears.”

Exactly who dropped the money off in Paris is not clear — Raja says he cannot say who the friend was for police operational reasons.

When the money bag was left by a bench in a Paris park, a Pakistani man and a Romanian woman who picked it up were tracked by police to Catalonia in Spain.

Two days passed without any word, leaving the family and police fearing the plan had failed.

However, a phone call last Monday said the boy would be released. Father and son were reunited on March 17 after Raja’s long flight from England to Islamabad, at the British High Commission.

Raja said: “He was screaming ‘daddy, daddy’. I scooped him up and hugged him so tight I thought he could break. Then I started crying.”

A few hours later, armed police seized the kidnappers in Spain arresting two Pakistani men and the Romanian woman.

A day later, Sahil was home in Shaw with banners, balloons and a street full of TV cameras to greet him.

Mum Akila said: “It was a magical moment. I hugged and kissed him, I couldn’t put him down.”

Sahil might be back in his own home, but life has changed for the family. He could return to school later this week, but the family are taking police advice.

The boy has said little but appears to have been treated well and given toys to play with.