Kidnapping confusion

byHabib Battah
Feb 25, 2013

Here’s one for the ‘confusing’ file. The boy above was kidnapped last week but returned this morning under a bridge in East Beirut.

The father was just on TV profusely thanking “all the political parties” who put in ‘tireless efforts’ to secure his release. And yet news reports say the father paid around $100,000 in ransom money. So how did the politicians ‘help’? Did they negotiate a better price with the kidnappers?

Awada’s case is the latest in the string of kidnappings where high ransoms have been paid, but little has been revealed about the perpetrators.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.