Kidnapped boy back home
2010-03-19 08:20
Manchester - A five-year-old British boy whose 12-day kidnap ordeal in Pakistan sparked an international police operation that led to arrests in Europe has arrived home.
Sahil Saeed was brought out onto the doorstep of his house in the arms of his mother Akila Naqqash to applause from well-wishers, shortly after his father brought him back from Islamabad on Thursday.
Looking tired, Sahil rubbed his eyes and refused to raise his head from his mother's shoulder to face the waiting media.
A banner reading "Welcome Sahil" hung from windows at the house in Oldham, northwest England, which was surrounded by steel barriers to keep dozens of reporters and television crews at a distance.
"We are ecstatic, everybody is over the moon... all we have done is non-stop praying. Now the mood's totally changed," said his aunt Naila Wasseem, part of the young boy's extended family who had gathered to celebrate his return.
His father Raja Naqqash Saeed had flown back with the boy from Pakistan hours earlier.
Sahil was smiling and in high spirits as he boarded the flight for the reunion with his mother, who had promised a "big party" on his return.
Before he left, Sahil kicked a football around the lawn of the British High Commissioner's residence in Islamabad and was cuddled by his relieved father, who had flown out earlier in the day to collect him, video footage showed.
In good spirits
The boy's release on Tuesday followed the payment by his uncle of a $168 000 ransom in Paris, which has since been largely recovered in a police operation that sparked five arrests.
"I am completely overjoyed that I have been reunited with my son after such a long ordeal," the father said in a statement released by the High Commission.
"Sahil is doing well, is in good spirits and can't wait to return to the UK to see his mum, his family and join his friends back at school," he added, thanking British and Pakistani authorities for assisting in his son's return.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking in Oldham, said everyone was "very, very happy that this potentially tragic story is ending in Sahil coming back to our country".
Sahil was snatched at gunpoint from his grandmother's house in the town of Jhelum, about 100km south of Islamabad, in the early hours of March 4 at the end of a family holiday.
Pakistani authorities, helped by British officials, launched a hunt for the boy, and 12 days later Sahil was recovered safe and well in a field not far from Jhelum as the focus of the investigation switched to France and Spain.
A Pakistani man and a Romanian woman, both awaiting trial on murder charges, were among five people arrested by police on Tuesday.