Pensioners Kidnap, Torture Financial Advisor Who Lost £2m
June 23, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Pensioners battered a financial adviser with Zimmer frames before kidnapping and torturing him for losing £2million of their savings.
James Amburn, 56, was ambushed outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, bound with masking tape and bundled into a car boot.
‘It took them quite a while because they ran out of breath,’ said Mr Amburn, who was driven to the Bavarian lakeside home of one of the gang.
Another couple, retired doctors, joined the kidnappers in the cellar where Mr Amburn was chained and tortured for four days last week.
The alleged kidnapping is the latest example of what is being dubbed “silver crime” — the violent backlash of pensioners who feel cheated by the world.
“As I was letting myself into my front door I was assaulted from behind and hit hard,” the financial adviser James Amburn, said. “Then they bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. I thought I was a dead man.”
He was freed by 40 heavily armed policemen from the counter-terrorist unit last Saturday. The frightened consultant was in his underwear, his body lacerated by wounds allegedly inflicted by angry pensioners.
It appears that two couples had entrusted Mr Amburn’s investment company with €2.4 million (£2 million), which he ploughed into Florida’s boom-and-bust property market. The properties became forfeit during the sub-prime mortgage crisis but the couples wanted their money back.
After being bundled into the boot of an Audi in the west German town of Speyer, Mr Amburn was driven southwards to Chieming, close to the Austrian border, where one of the couples Roland K, and his wife, Sieglinde, 79, had a holiday home.
Bizarre Kidnap Warning Issued In Canada
June 9, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
This ranks among one of the strangest news stories I have seen. ~Martin
Mounties in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, B.C., have issued an unusual warning about a potential child kidnapping plot.
Cpl. Jennifer Pound says they have information to believe an abduction may happen in the next several weeks.
She calls the information “minimal” but advises parents to be vigilant, urging them to tell their children to walk in groups in well lit, high-traffic areas.
“If approached, kids need to know that it is okay to misbehave,” Pound said.
“Talk to your kids and ensure them that it is important for them to draw attention to themselves. It is okay to yell and scream and do whatever they can do to get the attention of passer-bys.”
Pound would not specify how the RCMP received the information, but stresses the importance of the warning.
“We understand parents will be panicked about this,” Pound said.
“We don’t want them to be panicked but we want this information to get out there because it’s a child, and we need to get out that info to a large group.”
Bruce Beairsto, superintendent of the Richmond School District, says he was informed of the threat on Tuesday afternoon.
Beairsto says the Richmond School Board intends to take “prudent precautions around schools” and will also relay safety tips to students about the danger of strangers.
Linda McPhail of the Richmond School Board says a letter, translated into several languages, will be sent home to parents Wednesday.
“It will contain the notice by RCMP about a possible situation and how parents can take action,” McPhail said.
“And if they notice anything strange to contact both the school and the RCMP.”
The RCMP believes the potential victim is Asian and attends one of the Richmond elementary schools.
Pound says the potential perpetrator knows who the child is, but they have been unable to identify the potential victim.
The RCMP Serious Crimes Unit, as well as the Youth Section, General Duty, and Bike Sections have all been alerted, and are all participating in the joint investigation.
Taliban Kidnap Hundreds Of Cadets in Waziristan
June 1, 2009 by national
Filed under World Report
The Taliban in North Waziristan carried out a brazen daylight operation that resulted in the kidnapping of hundreds of military cadets and their teachers as they traveled from a college in North Waziristan.
A large Taliban force armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and assault rifles halted the convoy of 29 minibuses traveling from the Ramzak Cadet College to the settled district of Bannu. The cadets were traveling under the protection of Pakistani security forces, however there are no reports of fighting.
Between 300 to 400 cadets, teachers, and college staffers were kidnapped and taken to an undisclosed location. One bus driver and more than 40 students are reported to have escaped the Taliban hijacking.
“[A] Driver of one of the vehicles managed to escape and students reported to us that their colleagues have been kidnapped by Taliban,” a police official in Bakka Khel told Reuters. The convoy is said to have been ambushed near Bakka Khel.
The cadets and staff left the college after being threatened by the Taliban, according to reports.
via Taliban kidnap hundreds of cadets in Waziristan – The Long War Journal.
Kidnap Victim Left In Car With Bomb Belt – UK
Police are hunting a kidnap gang who tied up and apparently tortured an Asian man before dumping him in a car in a busy city centre, surrounded by a belt of canisters which they claimed were a bomb.
A huge alert in Birmingham disrupted one of the country’s busiest railway stations and led to the evacuation of factories and workshops while army explosives experts checked out the scene.
A police helicopter hovered overhead as officers sealed off the area, closing an adventure park and offering 15 residents and workers temporary refuge in a council leisure centre.
The restrictions were eased after the man, who had been reported to be foaming at the mouth by a witness before the 500-metre cordon was imposed, was taken to hospital with a broken leg and shock.
Speaking at the scene in Saltley, the head of the inquiry, Chief Superintendent Tom Coughlan, said the victim had told officers that he was forced into the car before being told about the bomb. He said: “This incident has now become a criminal investigation. We are seeking to establish the actual nature of the device that was placed in the car.”
The canisters, the size of beer cans, were designed to hold camping gas. They have been taken for examination by the army team. Coughlan said they would be examined for any trace of explosives, but the soldiers had not had to carry out any defusing or controlled explosions.
Mexico Nabs Hitman Linked To US Kidnap
April 25, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Police on Saturday said they arrested a Mexican drug cartel hitman wanted in connection with the abduction of a US anti-kidnap expert in December and the death of at least five people.
German Torres Jimenez, who allegedly works for the powerful Gulf drug cartel, was detained after a shootout in the eastern city of Veracruz, Mexico’s Public Safety Secretariat (SSP) said in a statement.
Two other suspected hitmen and two women were also arrested when police raided a home in the Poza Rica neighborhood of Veracruz.
Torres is allegedly one of the founders of Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf cartel. Los Zetas reportedly took control of the organization when cartel boss Osiel Cardenas was arrested, then extradited to the United States in 2005.
Torres is suspected of involvement in the December 2008 kidnapping of Felix Batista, a US security consultant and ex-US army officer who was abducted in the northern city of Saltillo where he was giving security seminars to local businessmen.
