Officials in Pakistan received a letter stating the Taliban’s plot to kidnap a high-ranking government official with the intention of exchanging him or her for bin Laden’s family. U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden, former terror chief, in May during a helicopter-borne raid in north-western Pakistan. The raid took place in one of bin Laden’s homes where he was hiding.

Focused on killing bin Laden, the U.S. Seals took his dead body from the compound but left at least two of his wives and several children in the home. Soon after the family members were detained by the Pakistani authorities, according to the Associated Press. Pakistan’s interior ministry received the letter, which warned of the kidnapping plot, on August 23.

An AP reporter obtained a copy of the letter, stamped “secret” on Friday. The letter said that the kidnapping warning was reliable. No information on specifically which Pakistani official the Taliban plans to kidnap was given. The letter did say that the kidnapping plot would most likely take place in one of Pakistan’s four provincial capitals – Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.

The letter was received by Pakistan just three days before Shahbaz Taseer, the son of a weathly provincial governor, was killed by Islamist militant on August 26.

The New York Times reported that Shahbaz’s father and former governor of Punjab Province, Salman Taseer, was killed in January in Islamabad. The assassin, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, who was one of Salman’s security guard, later said the killing of Salman was because of the governor’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

The deaths of Taseer father and son are not the only recent high-profile kidnappings that have taken place. Another abduction occurred in Lahore in August. The AP reported that on August 15, gunmen seized 70-year-old American aid expert, Warren Weinstein, from his house. Weinstein remains missing. The police declined to speculate on who may be holding the man.

Minister Rehman Malik said that there is no clear connention between the recent kidnapping of Shahbaz Taseer’s and the plot on to free bin Laden’s family. This is not the first time Pakistan has dealt with serious kidnapping plots by the Taliban. Pakistan has reportedly released Taliban prisoners before in exchange for kidnapped government officials as well as army officers, according to the AP.

Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reported that Pakistani police are preventing foreign journalists and other visitors from getting close to the house of bin Laden ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Danish Ambassador to Pakistan and his wife as well as two French journalists, were among several people detained this week in Abbottabad – the town where bin Laden’s last hideout was located.

They were held briefly before being allowed to leave.  Ambassador Uffe Wolffhechel said he asked security officers at a checkpoint on the road to bin Laden’s house whether he and his wife could get in viewing range of the compound and “they said ‘we are sorry, no,’ and we shook hands and said ‘have a nice day’.”

The Huffington Post reported that Wolffhechel and his wife were held for around two hours while officers checked their papers. Karim Khan, Abbottabad police officer, said the authorities were preventing journalists and foreigners from visiting the compound because it is regarded as evidence in investigations into how bin Laden lived there and how the CIA found him.
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In the early hours of Saturday, a group of unknown assailants forced their way into the house of US-citizen Warren Weinstein, an expert in international development who has been working in Pakistan for at least five years.

After overpowering security guards, they abducted Mr. Weinstein but someone has yet to claim responsibility.Lahore police chief Ahmed Raza Tahir told Reuters that a few people have been detained for questioning, including a guard posted at the house. “We hope to recover him soon,” he added without further details.

Abductions are relatively common in Pakistan and usually it is local people who are targeted for ransom. A few foreigners have been taken by militant groups.

In the BBC report, security guards were tricked to open the door before dawn on Saturday by men with food offerings for the fasting month of Ramadan. Alberto Rodriquez, a US embassy spokesman, confirmed the kidnapping and said American authorities was working with local police on the case.

Mr Weinstein, who is in his late 60s, has been identified as an employee for J.E. Austin & Associates, a Virginia-based consulting firm, on a development project in areas where Pakistani troops have been battling Islamist insurgents for years, according to Reuters.

The case is putting pressure on an already strained relationship between Pakistan and the United States which have been deteriorated since the US military raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden inside Pakistan in May.

Already in February, an American CIA contractor Raymond Davis caused anger when he shot who men whom he claimed were trying to rob him in Lahore.

According to the BBC, Mr Davis was released and returned to home after the US paid compensation to the deceased’s families.

The preceding abduction cases include a Swiss couple who was kidnapped in July by Pakistani Taliban. Last year, five-year-old Sahil Saeed, a British citizen, was kidnapped while visiting his grandmother in the Punjab region. He was released after 12 days on a $180,000 ransom.

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On Tuesday June 14, a Trenton, New Jersey state appeals court ruled that the man convicted for the kidnapping, rape, and killing of a seven-year old girl should be allowed to pursue claims that his lawyers were ineffective during his 1997 trial. However, the court disagreed with his claim that his entire conviction should be overturned, allowing his potential freedom.

Jesse Timmendequas, 50, who kidnapped Megan Kanka on July 29, 1994, lured her in by claiming he had a puppy at his residence where he lived with two other convicted sex offenders. Timmendequas had previous­ly served six years in prison for aggravated assault and attempted sexual assault of another child. He proceeded to sexually abuse Megan, strangle her, and leave the body in a park. Timmendequas even participated in the organized search for Kanka. He turned himself in 24 hours after the incident.

Megan’s law, which requires notification when high-risk sex offenders move into neighborhoods, was created after the crime and named after Megan Kanka.

Unfortunately, in February 2009 researchers determined that “despite wide community support for these laws, there is little evidence to date…to support a claim that Megan’s Law is effective.” In 2007, the cost of carrying out the law was estimated at $5.1 million statewide. However, Kanka’s mother, Maureen Kanka, was one of the first to voice her opinion in supporting the law as Megan’s father, Richard Kanka, is running for State Senate.

Timmendequas was given the death sentence before he applied for post-conviction relief. After the state of New Jersey abolished the death sentence in 2007, his conviction was converted to a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

Timmendequas, like all inmates on death row had been granted periodical opportunities to appeal his conviction. However, a judge has ruled that after the conversion from the death penalty to life without parole, this opportunity no longer remains. Since he has argued through his lawyers that his 1997 trial was unfair, the same judge has allowed for a different process.

Additionally, Timmendequas has said that during his earlier trial he was not allowed to participate in neurological testing after his conviction.

The judge has said that while some of Timmendequas’s motions have merit, his original conviction will not be overturned. Now, a new judge will determine the merit of the appeals through the arguments of two opposing attorneys. This trial procedure has fewer witnesses, but is generally more argumentative.

According to a New Jersey paper, Timmendequas’s attorney, Assistant Deputy Public Defender Jay Wilensky, has said that his client had “ineffective counsel at trial because they did not offer proof of his mental retardation and because they did not object to alleged prosecutorial misconduct.”

One key issue that the defendant is expected to argue is the bias of the jury due to high volumes of media coverage during Timmendequas’s 1997 trial. This is also an issue that has been discussed during the recent Casey Anthony trial.

At this point, the best-case scenario for Timmendequas includes a lesser sentence, or even an overturned appeal.

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In a recent statement reported by China Daily, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao showed his support of the growing effort to help children who are forced to become beggars – children who are often abused, exploited or worse; victims of abduction.

It is the last concern that has fueled a national campaign, led by the public in an unusual display of NGO activity, to stop child traffickers and return lost children to their biological parents. According to HumanTrafficking.org, China suffers from an epidemic of internal trafficking of children for sexual or labor exploitation and estimates suggests between 10.000 to 20.000 victims each year. One reason is that child beggars are an unfortunate source of revenue for crime organizations. In major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, child beggars are not an unusual sight but their stories often involves being kidnapped and even deliberately crippled to raise profit.

Another reason is that the cultural values surrounding children has fueled a market for child trafficking. China’s ‘one-child’ policy – combined with a preference for sons – is held partly responsible for the development. Some parents are prepared to buy a stolen child if they are unable to have a boy of their own and the price is estimated to be around $5.000, according to the BBC. The cultural value, however, is much higher as is the male child that continues the family name and traditionally takes care of the elderly parents along with his wife. A daughter ends up being a social disadvantage as she is obligated to take care of her in-laws. Another aspect is that couples who are unable to conceive a child would be desperate enough to buy one illegally because adoption is complicated and most children who are delivered to orphanages are disabled.

Der Spiegel investigated the tragic phenomenon last year and found that desperate parents of kidnapped children had only small chances of tracking down their child. Family clans control things in the villages and corruption is ever present. “Everyone knows when a new child has suddenly arrived in the village,” Lo Shouquan told Der Spiegel in an interview, “and no one asks any questions.”

Between 2001 and 2005, the Chinese police led a strong campaign against trafficking and arrested more than 25.000 suspected traffickers while rescuing more than 35.000 victims. In November 2009, two men were executed for abducting and selling 15 children in total. In 2010, a woman was sentenced to death for 49 accounts of trafficking. Despite the effort, the numbers of abductions are still soaring and grassroots activity has taken over where the government seems to have failed. The most remarkable example of activism is the use of microblogs to connect parents with lost children; the pioneer is a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who encouraged his readers to take photos of child beggars in the hopes that parents could identify missing children. The microblog inspired the creation of thousands similar sites and the most recent success story was Peng Wenle who was found, after having been snatched three years ago, through a user on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Despite a hopeful surge in public interest, China is listed on the Tier 2 Watch List in the 2010 U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report where it has been noted that the Chinese government fail to sufficiently address the country’s trafficking problem. The recent comment by Premier Wen Jiabao may be a step in the right direction but a massive effort is needed to effectively crack down on the lucrative trade. In the meantimes,   parents are advised to keep their children under a watchful eye.

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