Kidnapping in Malaga reaches court eight years later

A COUPLE accused of kidnapping a woman and her two children in 2003 face two years in prison. The abduction occurred in 2003 in reprisal for an alleged debt of 40 million pesetas (€240,000) but police rescued the hostages the following day following a tipoff from a hospital nurse.

The accused woman went to the victim’s Malaga home, enquiring after her husband.  She then asked to stay the night, claiming that her car had broken down.

Next day the woman, accompanied by her children, drove her to Alhaurin el Grande. Once there she was told by a North African that had been abducted because of her husband’s debt.

Meanwhile, the accused and her partner returned to the woman’s home for her phone so they could contact her husband, leaving her and the children Alhuarin.  When one of their six guards said she and her husband would be killed once the debt was settled, the distraught woman had a panic attack and began self-harming.

Because of her injuries, the alarmed kidnapper took the victim next morning to hospital where she told a nurse what had happened. The police were informed and the children were later found at the home of a friend of the accused. 

The Malaga court found the two accused guilty of illegal detention, attenuated by unjustified delays, given that the case took more than eight years to come to court “despite lacking complexity.”