A British couple has been reunited with their five-year-old son, two days after he was released by kidnappers who snatched him in central Pakistan earlier this month.
Sahil Saeed flew home to his parents' house in Manchester, England, yesterday, after his dad had first flown to Islamabad to see his son for the first time since he had been gone.
"Sahil is doing well, is in good spirits," the boy's father, Raja Naqqash Saeed, said after being reunited with his son in Islamabad.
He was reunited with his mother when he and his father got back to their home in England on Thursday evening.
CTV's London Bureau Chief, Tom Kennedy said it appears Sahil was treated well by his kidnappers, although they cut off his hair while he was in captivity. The boy is healthy and happy, despite his ordeal.
"The family is delighted that this really does have a happy ending. He is in remarkably good shape considering what he went through," he told CTV's Canada AM from London on Friday morning.
The young boy was visiting his grandparents at their home in Jhelum, Pakistan, when he was kidnapped on March 4. Robbers held the family at gunpoint for several hours, before taking off with various household possessions and Sahil.
He was found in a small village in Punjab province 12 days later, about 30 kilometres southeast of Jhelum. Sahil was unharmed and was taken into custody by the British High Commission, until he could be reunited with relatives.
Kennedy said the case quickly drew the attention of worldwide media, though it wasn't initially a major story in Pakistan, where kidnappings are not an uncommon occurrence.
"It should be said that this involved a British boy of Pakistani origin…and because there was such international media attention of what had happened, it began to get a lot of attention in Pakistan as well," Kennedy said.
Police in four countries were involved in tracking down the people accused of kidnapping Saeed, whom allegedly demanded the boy's ransom from a location in Spain.
On Wednesday, Spanish police arrested two Pakistani men and a Romanian woman, each of whom now face preliminary charges of kidnapping a minor.
It is not clear if the accused trio will be tried in Spain, or if their case will be transferred to another country.
Kennedy said police were involved with the case from the get-go, a development which the suspected kidnappers never picked up on.
"Just couple of days into the kidnapping, Sahil's father inexplicably left Pakistan and returned to England," he said.
"The Pakistani police openly criticized him for doing that, but it was all a charade. It was part of this international investigation."
First the kidnappers asked for Sahil's father to come to England to drop the ransom. They spoke in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan.
Then they asked him to go to Spain, before diverting him to Paris, where he delivered a US$152,000 ransom to collectors at a McDonald's restaurant.
All the while police were watching the suspects, before and after they took the money, when they visited relatives in Bobigny, France, and eventually when they crossed over the Spanish border.
As soon as it was clear that Sahil had been freed, the Spanish police made their move.
In Spain, police managed to recover almost all of the ransom money that had been paid out, which the family had apparently worked hard to raise.
"One of the questions is whether or not the government of Britain -- although it has been denied -- or maybe authorities in Pakistan somehow contributed to the payment of ransom," said Kennedy.
"But in any case, the family raised as much money as they could, perhaps the entire amount, simply by selling anything they had of value. And not just the direct family of the child in Manchester, but the extended family."
With files from The Associated Press
