Laurence Dollimore
AN expat was drugged and kidnapped and held captive for 11 days by an eastern European gang that demanded €1.5 million, police revealed yesterday.The unnamed Dutchman was taken on June 12 by a group disguised as Spanish police near his home in Lloret de Mar, a seaside resort in northeastern Spain.
He was released 11 days later after a police operation in Casarrubios del Monte, a small town close to Madrid where he was being held.
According to police, his kidnappers had been lying low near his home, waiting for the opportune moment to take him.
They hit him, blindfolded him and forced into a car boot at gunpoint, he told police after his release.
One of the kidnappers then used the man’s mobile phone to call his wife and demand a ransom of €1.5 million in exchange for his freedom, according to a police statement.
The hostage was constantly fed tranquilisers and sedatives by the alleged head of the gang, a Romanian man who studied medicine in Madrid.
Police tracked down the gang after the hostage’s family alerted the authorities.
They managed to rescue the hostage just hours before a scheduled meeting to hand over the ransom money at a hotel parking lot near a motorway.
Police said the kidnappers had begun moving the drugged hostage out of the house in a wheelchair before backtracking, realising they were being watched.
