Police foil £400,000 kidnap plot by gang in Pakistan

· Family urges victims of extortion to come forward
· Businessman's brother freed after 15-day operation
Mohammad Zaman
Mohammad Zaman (beard) with his brother Mohammad Sabir Mughal who was kidnapped in Pakistan. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

Victims of extortion crime have been urged to contact police after the spectacular foiling by covert officers of a £400,000 kidnap ransom demand.

A Bradford businessman targeted by a gang in Pakistan with informants in Yorkshire and London appealed for trust in the police to deter the highly organised criminals responsible for the growing number of such crimes against Britain's Asian community.

The call came as details emerged of a secret 15-day operation to free the businessman's brother, who was kidnapped last year. The operation included helicopter surveillance in London, the bugging of a Bradford gang member's car and the use of Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) contacts across the world.

"We hope this clearly demonstrates our commitment to these cases," said Det Supt Paul Taylor of West Yorkshire police, who saw the victim released, the ransom recovered and two British gang members given six- and seven-year jail terms.

Bradford businessman Mohammed Zaman, 55, said: "Kidnappings in Pakistan that resort to ransoms demanded from relatives in England are all too common. I cannot praise the police enough. What are words in a matter like this?"

He was speaking after a reunion with his brother Sabir Mughal, 47, who was seized last February as he drove to his hardware shop in Mirpur. Zaman defied the gang's threat to kill his brother if he contacted the police. He contacted a family friend, Jawaid Akhtar, who is an assistant chief constable at West Yorkshire police.

Zaman's son, Asif, who helped hand over £236,000 in secretly marked notes in London, watched by the police helicopter and undercover officers, says that the huge difference between incomes in Britain and Pakistan are fuelling an increase in extortion crime.

"If you can steal £100,000, it is much more tempting than 100,000 rupees [£780]," he said, after a reunion with Mughal, who flew over from Pakistan to thank the family. "Our family had nothing like the money the gang was demanding, but if you are earning even £1,200 a month here, that is a fortune to someone in Pakistan earning £50."

Sensitive policing has been central to countering the gangs, whose strategy includes the near certainty that the British Asian community will rally round to help raise money. The sheer level of police resources was crucial, with Taylor drawing on Soca's worldwide muscle. As well as the handover in London, meetings were watched at motorway services and hundreds of phone calls between Britain and Pakistan were intercepted.

"We sent two of own officers to Pakistan and had excellent liaison with the police there," said Taylor. The three men who blocked Mughal's car at gunpoint in Mirpur have not yet been caught, but there are fresh leads from evidence released after the successful prosecution of Rehmat Awan, 55, and Masood Sarwar, 51, both once leading business and community figures in Bradford.

Detectives uncovered a double life in both cases which showed how tip-offs operate between informers in Britain and those in Pakistan plotting extortion.

"It is something which people here resent enormously," Zaman said. "Even with special family occasions such as weddings in Pakistan, when people from Britain fly out with their best clothes and jewellery and gifts and suchlike, criminals will know which flight they are on. Then they ambush them on the drive to the wedding and steal everything."

Awan, a former business partner of Zaman and a founding member of one of Bradford's mosques, went to extraordinary lengths to protect his cover. He attended fundraising meetings and even donated £10,000 to the ransom appeal for Mughal.

"That's the only bit of the money which won't be going back to its original owner, thanks to the proceeds of crime law," Zaman said.

Mughal, his wife and their five children are still recovering from the ordeal, but are optimistic that the plot's failure will be a deterrent.

Before flying home he said: "My family and the police have shown the right answer to this sort of crime."

Blackmail plan

Mohammed Zaman was targeted by a kidnap gang in Pakistan after he sold a nursing home in the Lancashire town of Ramsbottom for what his former business partner Rehmat Awan believed was a huge sum. Awan joined the ranks of informers in Britain who tip off Pakistani criminals about rich pickings for extortion.

He knew that Zaman had two brothers in Mirpur who work at a hardware and mobile phone shop. The gang targeted one of them, Sabir Mughal. Before his car was blocked on his way to work in February 2007, and he was drugged and chained in a windowless room, scores of phone calls had been made between the kidnap gang, Awan and Masood Sarwar.

A former Bradford businessman who had moved to south Woodford in London, Sarwar agreed to collect the ransom in nearby Walthamstow.

The kidnap went like clockwork and appeared to trigger a panicky response from his brother in Bradford. In fact, Zaman had contacted West Yorkshire police. Anwar came up as a suspect straight away. Police called on the resources of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. As a result, Anwar was watched from a helicopter over Walthamstow and eavesdropped as he sat in his car, apparently triumphant.

Awan was jailed for seven years and Sarwar for six at Bradford crown court last month, both for conspiracy to commit blackmail.