North: Bingo hall money used to pay ransom
Bingo hall money was used to pay the ransom to free a kidnapped teenager.
The victim, aged 18, was threatened after he was seized from an alleyway in the staunchly republican Ardoyne district of North Belfast last night.
A gang bundled him into a car and used his mobile phone to call a family member demanding cash for his safe release.
It is understood a relative of the teenager, whose parents are both dead, was ordered to go to a bingo hall at the Yorkgate entertainment complex about two miles from the scene of the abduction and get the money from a safe.
An undisclosed sum of more than £1,000 (€1,450) was left at an arranged drop-off point on Harding Place, off the New Lodge Road, before the victim was released at 10.30pm.
He was not injured, but political representatives who spoke to the family said he had been left terrified by the ordeal.
Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly urged anyone with information to report it to the appropriate authorities in a bid to capture the gang.
With many in the Ardoyne community still refuse to recognise Northern Ireland’s police service, Mr Kelly said: “People will make up their own mind.
“People will go to the PSNI and there are people who will not.
“What I want is information brought forward so these people can be brought to justice.”
Mr Kelly added that explicit threats were made that the victim would be hurt unless the ransom was produced.
“This was a young 18-year-old man who has been taken away and put through all sorts of hell to line the pockets of some person or persons.”
