We just received this month’s Kidnap & Random and Extortion Monitor from Clayton Consultants. It offers a monthly digest of media-recorded incidents of extortion and kidnapping from around the globe. It contained seventeen pages of reports from the past few weeks.
If you or your employees travel internationally you need to be aware that Kidnap & Ransom and Extortion are real threats. Here are three excerpts from the Clayton KRE Monitor:
Palestinian Authority, 3 January 2007: Palestinian security services reportedly urged foreign nationals — especially European and U.S. nationals — to leave the Gaza Strip out of fear of further kidnappings. A senior security official said Palestinian security agencies had received alerts of possible kidnappings. The warning came as police forces continue their search for a Peruvian photographer who was kidnapped by unknown militants in Gaza on 1 January. Abductions of foreigners have been fairly common in the impoverished territory, with 20 foreign nationals abducted over the past year. In most cases, the abductors used the hostages as bargaining chips for concessions from the Palestinian Authority, and the detainees were released unharmed within days. (aljazeera.net, 3 January 2007)
Ireland, 12 January 2007: Police officials on both sides of the Irish border are hunting for a gang involved in a kidnapping. Two masked men, one armed, held hostage the manager of a U.S. fast food outlet located in Londonderry, at a house in Muff, county of Donegal, while another staffer was forced to go to their workplace in Derry’s Waterside area and collect a ransom. Police stated that the amount of money delivered to the abductors was small. The manager was released on the Donegal side of the border at about 2100 local time. Police officials said they were working with the Police Services of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and a number of searches were being conducted along the border. (news.bbc.co.uk, 12 January 2007)
Iraq, 17 December 2006: Concerns are growing for the four South African security guards abducted in Iraq a week ago, reportedly by criminals posing as policemen at a roadblock north of Baghdad. Negotiations between the guards’ employer, Safenet Security Service, and their abductors seem to be deadlocked because the kidnappers want a larger ransom than Safenet is prepared to pay. The four South Africans are believed to be former policemen, but some security sources say one of them is a former member of 1 Parachute Battalion. The sources say the men are from Durban, Pretoria, Orkney and Cape Town. Ronnie Mamoepa, the spokesperson for the department of foreign affairs, said this week that Safenet was negotiating directly with the kidnappers but the government was monitoring developments through its diplomats in neighboring Jordan. South Africa has no official representation in Iraq. Some members of the security community are worried that if the kidnappers don’t get their ransom they will hand the men over to a terrorist organization. There have been scores of kidnappings in Iraq since the start of the insurgency, including some by gangs who sell their victims to Islamist groups. (int.iol.co.za, 17 December 2006)
If you’d like to learn about your options for insuring this growing risk, please contact our special risk department at 1-800-423-8496 x19.