Ten years for couple in kidnap of British boy, five

Three judges at the Provincial Court in Tarragona found Muhammad Zahid Saleem and Gianina Monica Neruja guilty of snatching Sahil Saeed, of Oldham, at gunpoint in Pakistan in March 2010.

The court heard that Saleem and Neruja had made threatening calls to Sahil’s family and travelled to Paris to collect the £110,000 ransom from one of his uncles.

Saleem, who is from Pakistan, was found not guilty of conspiracy, robbery in conjunction with a crime of trespassing and eight charges of unlawful arrest. Neruja, his Romanian wife, was cleared of conspiracy.

Their Pakistani flatmate, Khawaja Fawaaz Munawar, was found not guilty of kidnap of a minor and conspiracy.

Khawaja, who was living in Spain as an illegal immigrant when he was arrested, was charged under the name Muhammad Sageiz.

Sahil was snatched by an armed gang at his grandmother’s home during a holiday with his father in Jhelum, in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

Four masked men carrying AK-47 assault rifles and grenades tied up and beat members of the family and ransacked the house before making off with the child.

An international police operation was launched and Sahil was released in Pakistan after the £110,000 ransom was dropped off by his uncle, Tauseer Ahmed, in Paris and collected by Saleem and Neruja.

In their written sentence, the panel of judges said: “It is evident that both Muhammad Zahid Saleem and Gianina Monica Neruja were in contact with the people who carried out the kidnapping in Pakistan.”

During Sahil’s 13-day ordeal, Saleem made phone calls warning the boy’s family he would be killed and parts of his body would be sent to them if they did not pay the ransom.

Neruja instructed Sahil’s father, Raja Naqqash Saeed, to travel to Paris with the ransom money and warned him not to make any “mistakes” or else “everything would turn out bad” for his son.

The judges heard Saleem, a former interpreter at the Provincial Court in Tarragona, had been part of a “criminal clan” in Pakistan and was wanted in connection with 15 murders there.