Kidnapping ‘crisis’: It’s ‘gruesome and torturous’, says son of businessman rescued after 111 days

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Kidnapping 'crisis': It's 'gruesome and torturous', says son of businessman rescued after 111 days
Kidnapping 'crisis': It's 'gruesome and torturous', says son of businessman rescued after 111 days

Africa-Press – South-Africa. For 111 days, the family of kidnapped businessman Ismail Rajah had no idea whether he was dead or alive.

When police made the breakthrough and freed the 69-year-old businessman, almost four months after he was snatched by AK-47-wielding kidnappers outside his Parow business, it was considered a miracle.

On Thursday, at an interfaith meeting in Athlone, Rajah’s son, Raziek, told Police Minister Bheki Cele and his top brass about the repercussions of his father’s ordeal.

Religious leaders called the gathering, claiming kidnappings have been ongoing for the past six years and are “flourishing unhindered from the various policing authorities”.

Rajah, the founding CEO of Good Hope Construction, was kidnapped in March.

Raziek said the family faced a “very difficult crossroads” as the perpetrators took “the right person at the wrong time”.

The family had experienced great financial losses, he explained, and they didn’t have the ransom amount demanded.

He said:

After numerous complaints, which ended up as high up as the police’s portfolio committee, he was put in touch with the National Anti-Kidnapping Task Team.

“I swear to you, they worked on my dad’s case as if it was their own father. From our family’s side, we dubbed [Major-General Feroz Khan] as Ironman and [Colonel Ismael Dawood] as Hulk. We got real life heroes,” he said.

Rajah was rescued at a house in Khayelitsha in June.

“[This shows] SAPS has got the resources. They might be misplaced in certain units, but they have the resources.”

Raziek, who described kidnapping as “one of the worst crimes”, said there was a big difference between being rescued and being released.

“When you’re rescued, it doesn’t matter if you were there for 111 days, you have some faith in humanity. [You think] ‘they found me, somebody cared’. To all the others who are released, you don’t have faith even in the person sitting next to you… because humanity forgot you.”

Police at the time said a ransom demand had been made to the Rajahs, who were on their way to Dubai to “expedite” the payment, when the task team was deployed.

Raziek repeatedly praised the officers with “one billion stars” for bringing his father back home.

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His decision to speak about their ordeal was not an easy one, he said, as it had left their family severely traumatised and always looking over their shoulders.

“There is a reason why people don’t talk about kidnappings. It’s because it’s that gruesome and torturous.

“I intend no insult to any other crime that is committed. But any other crime, it ends. With a kidnapping, you relive someone’s death 100 times over, as we did with my dad,” Raziek said.

There were many shortcomings during the police’s investigation, Raziek said, but the success “reinstated our belief in the system”.

“Do we have the resources to stop this in SA? Yes, we do. But we need the political will to do it.”

At the meeting, a representative from Cape Town’s Bangladeshi community said that, in the past three months, 11 Bangladeshis had been kidnapped in the city.

He echoed Raziek’s call for a dedicated task team to focus exclusively on the scourge of kidnapping and extortion.

In a memorandum handed to Cele at the meeting, faith leaders demanded specifically from the minister whether he had solutions to the kidnapping “crisis” in the province, his response to allegations of police being in cahoots with the perpetrators, and reasons for the authorities’ inefficiency in with dealing with the syndicates.

The minister committed to “pursue the issues raised”, adding that South Africans should “not be told you are safe, they should feel that they are safe”.

At a press briefing in Parliament earlier on Thursday, Cele said the extortion task team had been making strides since being established about a year ago.

He said:

“There are also guys that go for top businesspeople. They demand higher amounts of money. There is a national team too, and there have been serious responses in this province when it comes to extortion. There are cases that have not been resolved, but they are being pursued.

“The murders that take place in the townships are also linked to these extortion cases. The team has been enhanced by the national team. There are successes, even though there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Cele said police in the Western Cape were investigating 32 cases of kidnapping, which were committed between March and September. A total of 15 people were arrested in connection with the kidnappings.

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