Spanish police rescue hostage
boy
From BBC News
June
8, 2006—Two
Nigerian women have been arrested in Spain accused of stealing
a child and forcing his mother into prostitution to pay their
ransom.
The mother, also Nigerian,
claims her son was snatched from her shortly after he was born
four years ago. She said the women demanded 45,000 euros (£31,000)
for his return and threatened her with "voodoo". The boy was
kept hidden from neighbours in a Madrid flat until police tracked
him down and rescued him this week.
The kidnap and blackmail came to light when the mother, who has since
given up prostitution, went to the police. She said the women had
got her into Spain from Nigeria illegally - which was why she owed
them money.
After they took her
son, she said she worked as a prostitute in different clubs
around Spain to pay off the debt. Officers investigating the
case confirmed that the woman had had a baby in 2002 and finally
tracked down the suspects - identified only as Becky F, aged
27, and Faith N, aged 24. The women were known to live in a
flat with an 18-month-old girl and another young Nigerian woman.
Officers could not confirm the presence of a young boy until
a neighbour reported hearing cries from the flat that differed
from the little girl's. On Tuesday, the surveillance teams
got the breakthrough they needed when a boy appeared on the
balcony. Police raided the flat and found the boy, his mother's
passport and other items used in voodoo rituals which the suspects
used "to terrorise the mother". Trafficking networks Police
said the boy was healthy, although he showed signs of delayed
development and had barely learned to talk. He has not been
to school and has not been registered at any official institutions,
such as health centres. "Despite being the only black child
in the block of flats, hardly any of his neighbours had seen
him there or in the local children's playgrounds," the police
said. They said his captors had probably kept him hidden, alone,
in the flat all day. He has now been taken into the care of
social services. In the past few years, Spanish police have
broken up a number of illegal immigration networks involving
Nigerian women being brought to Spain to work as prostitutes.
In March, six people were arrested in Valencia, accused of
running such an enterprise.
Voodoo has often been found
to be a way of threatening the women, but reports say kidnapping
their children is less frequent.
