RAWALPINDI, March 25: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) handed down life term to a man on Friday for kidnapping a five-year-old British boy of Pakistani origin last year. Sahil Naqash Saeed was freed after ransom was paid in Paris. ATC-III Special Judge Rana Nisar Ahmed convicted Imran Hussain for the March 3, 2010 kidnapping of the child from his parents’ ancestral house in a village of the Jhelum district with the help of accomplices.

The convict was sentenced to a life term for kidnapping, another life term for spreading terror, and 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for robbery.

Sahil’s father Raja Naqash Saeed, a British national, had to pay £110,000 as ransom to a couple in Paris who were later arrested in Spain after the child was released on March 16, 2010 in a village of the Gujrat district of Punjab, after remaining in the custody of kidnappers for 12 days.

Three alleged accomplices of Imran Hussain were killed in a shootout with police in May last year while police informed the court that the couple arrested in Spain – a Pakistani man identified as Saghir alias Nadeem and a Romanian woman identified as Monica – were being tried there on the charge of planning the kidnapping and receiving the ransom.

AP quoted a court official, Fayaz Haider, as having said the ATC had also ordered that all belongings and property of Imran Husain be seized.