Pakistan cops kill 4 in rescue of teen kidnapped via Facebook
Pakistani volunteers move the dead bodies of the boy’s kidnappers to a hospital in Karachi on May 27, 2013.
Pakistan police killed four kidnappers and captured another in the rescue of a teenager who had been lured away from home and abducted via Facebook.
Police tracked the kidnappers mobile phone records and found the 13-year old boy, called Mustafa, in the west of Karachi, where officers raided the gang's home on Monday.
Officials say the group had pretended for six months to be video gamers and chatted with the boy online, taking him Friday after a meeting had been arranged and demanding a $500,000 ransom.
The boy, son of a high-ranking customs official, was then taken to Hub, a town in Baluchistan province, where police rescued him. It's unclear if the suspects were militants or a gang simply looking for money, but kidnapping is a somewhat frequent crime in Pakistan.
A day before Pakistan's landmark general elections, gunmen abducted the son of a former prime minister in southern Punjab Province. Ali Haider Gilani is still missing.
The mother of the rescued boy made a passionate call for parents to watch their children and monitor their use of social media. "This is my request to all the parents to never let their children make friendship on Facebook," she said. "I beg you for God's sake that you never do."
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