The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Bangladesh-origin Ruhel Choudhury. Ruhel has ties to the Hollis, Queens Village, and Jamaica areas of Queens, New York. He may transport and sell used cars, according to the FBI. Ruhel Choudhury is wanted for his alleged involvement in two kidnappings that occurred on March 27, 2023, and May 11, 2023, in Queens, New York. Read more: ‘Sexual harassment’: Viqarunnisa teacher lands in jail  He and others allegedly abducted the victims off the street and then robbed, tortured, and drugged them. One victim was held for ransom and sexually assaulted. Ruhel allegedly provided and drove the vehicles used to confine and transport the victims to various locations in Queens during the kidnappings. He also allegedly assaulted and threatened the victims. Ruhel was indicted in the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, Brooklyn, New York, and a federal warrant was issued for his arrest on January 9, 2024, after he was charged with two counts of kidnapping and two counts of kidnapping conspiracy. Read more: Petition filed seeking closure of restaurants in residential buildings

Two policemen have been arrested from Dhaka’s Sher-e-Banglanagar area in the capital on charges of extortion and kidnapping. The arrestees are sub-inspectors Tuhin Kazi and Moshiur Rahman Taposh. Both were posted at Mirpur Shah Ali Police Station in the capital. Woman arriving from Dubai arrested with over 8 kg gold at Dhaka airport They have already been suspended after primary investigation. Being informed, a team of police from Sher-e-Banglanagar police station arrested them on Tuesday night on charges of extortion after kidnapping. Later, both of them were shown arrested in a case filed at the police station by one Shahadat Sarker. BCL leader arrested for threatening independent candidate in Narsingdi Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Sher-e-Banglanagar police station Ahad Ali, confirmed the matter. They were produced before a Dhaka court on Wednesday with a remand plea. After the hearing, the court put them on a three-day remand each, the OC said. 3 AL men arrested for attacking independent candidate's supporter in Rajshahi Contacted, Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Mirpur Division, DMP, Jasim Uddin, said legal procedure has been completed against the two SIs as primary investigation found the allegation against them to be true.

Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) has recovered the body a 10-year old girl, who was abducted while going to school on March 21, at Pahartali Wireless Chicken Farm area of the Chattogram city. Body of Abida Sultana Ayoni was recovered from a pond early Wednesday and it is suspected that she was raped before murder, said PBI SP Nayeema Sultana. Prime suspect in this case Rubel was interrogated and according to his information, Abida’s body was recovered from the pond, she said. Details will be revealed through a press conference today, said the PBI SP. According to the case statement, the 4th grader was going to school on that day. When she reached Kazir Dighi's Sagarika Road area, local vegetable seller Rubel lured her to give kittens and abducted her which was caught on CCTV footage. Since then the girl remained untraced.

Armed terrorists kidnapped eight people from a stream inside a hill in Jahajpura ward no 6 under Cox’s Bazar’s Teknaf upazila on Sunday. The kidnappers have demanded Tk 3 lakh for each of them as ransom, said family members. Read more: 16 Rohingya including children and women detained in Sreemangal Those kidnapped are Mohammad Ullah, son of Rashid Ahmad, Mostafa Kamal, son of Syed Amir, Md Ridwan, son of Mamataj Mia, Selim Ullah, son of Rustam Ali, Krim Ullah, son of Syed Amir, Nurul Haque, son of Kader Hossain, Nur Mohammad, son of Nurul Haque and Md Absar, son of Rashid Ahmad. All of them are residents of Jahajpura ward of the upazila. Md Rafiqul Islam, a member of Jahajpura No 6 ward, said  eight people including three college students went to catch fish from the hilly stream when they were kidnapped by armed terrorists. Read more: Cases filed against 78 people over Rohingya deaths in 'gunfight' Md Abdul Halim, Officer In-charge (OC) of Teknaf Model Police Station, said that a large police team has been conducting a drive to find out the terrorists. “We’ll conduct combing operation if necessary if we can get the location of the terrorists,” said the OC.

Police arrested four persons for realising Tk 1.85 lakh from an apparel businessman after he was abducted on October 7. Though police produced the arrestees with a remand prayer before a court on Tuesday, it sent them to jail fixing Wednesday for the hearing in this connection. Md Kamrul Islam, officer-in-charge of South Surma Police Station, confirmed the matter to UNB.    Police had arrested them from Humayun Rashid Chattar in South Surma upazila by Monday, but only disclosed the matter today.   The arrestees are Md Tamij Ali, 40, son of late Abdus Samad of Chhatak upazila, Topu Ranjan Dev, 35, son of late Romendra Narayan Dev of Kotwali, Md Sajjad Mia, 45, son of late Anrej Mia and Md Nayon Mia, 35, son of late Sheikh Majid Mia of an area under Sylhet airport police station. Read: 7 get 10 years jail for abduction in Khulna Police said the apparel businessman had been waiting for a bus to take him to Dhaka in front of the Al Safa Rest House, located within the upazila, around 5am on October 7. That’s when four persons riding two motorbikes abducted him and took him to a rest house in Zindabazar of the city, asking for Tk 3 lakh as ransom, the police said. The abductors were able to get Tk 85,000 off him, at the same time targeting his wife and pressuring her into transferring another Tk 1 lakh to them. After receiving the amount, the kidnappers released him around 2am on October 8. OC Kamrul said they arrested the abductors on Monday after the victim filed a case in this connection.

A court in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday sentenced seven policemen, all detectives, to seven years in jail for kidnapping a trader and demanding a ransom of Tk 17 lakh for his release. Cox’s Bazar District and Sessions Court judge Mohammad Ismail handed down the judgment in the presence of all the suspended cops. The judge also imposed a fine of Tk 1 lakh on each of the convicts and ordered them to undergo an additional one year in prison for non-payment of the fine. The court sentenced the convicted cops to five years in jail for kidnapping and another seven years for extortion by putting a person in fear of death.  As both the sentences will run simultaneously, the convicts will serve a total of seven years in jail, said plaintiff’s lawyer Mohammad Jahangir. The convicts are sub inspectors Moniruzzaman, 35, and Abul Kalam Azad, 39, additional sub-inspectors Golam Mostafa, 36, Firoz Ahmed, 34, and Alauddin, 32, and constables Mostafa Ajal, 52, and MD Al Amin, 26. On September 24, 2017, the seven kidnapped Abdul Gafur, a trader hailing from Teknaf and later demanded Tk 17 lakh as ransom from his family by threatening to kill him in a fake encounter, said public prosecutor Faridul Alam. According to the case complaint, the Bangladesh Army arrested six of the accused with the ransom amount from the Marin Drive in Cox’s Bazar on October 25, 2017. Later, another absconding detective was arrested by the police. Abdul, the victim, later filed a complaint with Teknaf police, based on which a case for kidnapping and extortion was lodged. In August, 2018, Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) submitted a chargesheet in this case against the seven detectives. On September 5 this year, the court rejected the bail pleas of the seven cops.

A tribunal here on Tuesday sentenced two people to death for killing an eighth grader after kidnapping him in Jajira upazila of Shariatpur district in 2020. The condemned convicts were Imran Morol and Sakib Babu. Also read:Bhola double murder: 2 sentenced to death The tribunal also acquitted four accused -Aktar Madbor, Sajib Majhi, Mohsin Hawlader, and Swapa Hawlader. Shariatpur Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal Judge Abdus Salam Khan pronounced the judgment with the convicts in the dock. Both the defense and prosecution have expressed dissatisfaction over the judgment saying they will move to the higher court to get justice.   According to the case statement, local youths kidnapped  Shakil Madbor and demanded Tk 5 lakh as ransom money. They later killed him on June 25, 2020 and buried the body near a pillar of Padma Bridge at Jajira end. The victim’s father, Salam Madbor, lodged a complaint with Jajira police station. Also read: Blogger Ananta killing: 4 sentenced to death Later police arrested Sakib who took Shakil to play in a local field. Based on Sakib’s information, police recovered the body of Shakil and a murder case was filed at Jajira Police Station accusing seven people.

A group of 17 U.S. missionaries including children was kidnapped by a gang in Haiti on Saturday, according to a voice message sent to various religious missions by an organization with direct knowledge of the incident. The missionaries were on their way home from building an orphanage, according to a message from Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries. “This is a special prayer alert,” the one-minute message said. “Pray that the gang members would come to repentance.” Read:Options shrink for Haitian migrants straddling Texas border The message says the mission's field director is working with the U.S. Embassy, and that the field director's family and one other unidentified man who stayed at the ministry's base while everyone else visiting the orphanage, was abducted. No other details were immediately available. A U.S. government spokesperson said they were aware of the reports on the kidnapping. “The welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the Department of State,” the spokesperson said, declining further comment. Haiti is once again struggling with a spike in gang-related kidnappings that had diminished after President Jovenel Moïse was fatally shot at his private residence on July 7, and following a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck southwest Haiti in August and killed more than 2,200 people. Gangs have demanded ransoms ranging from a couple hundred dollars to more than $1 million, according to authorities. Last month, a deacon was killed in front of a church in the capital of Port-au-Prince and his wife kidnapped, one of dozens of people who have been abducted in recent months. At least 328 kidnapping victims were reported to Haiti’s National Police in the first eight months of 2021, compared with a total of 234 for all of 2020, according to a report issued last month by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti known as BINUH. Gangs have been accused of kidnapping schoolchildren, doctors, police officers, busloads of passengers and others as they grow more powerful. In April, one gang kidnapped five priests and two nuns, a move that prompted a protest similar to the one organized for this Monday to decry the lack of security in the impoverished country. Read: US launches mass expulsion of Haitian migrants from Texas “Political turmoil, the surge in gang violence, deteriorating socioeconomic conditions – including food insecurity and malnutrition – all contribute to the worsening of the humanitarian situation,” BINUH said in its report. “An overstretched and under-resourced police force alone cannot address the security ills of Haiti.” On Friday, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to extend the U.N. political mission in Haiti. The kidnapping of the missionaries comes just days after high-level U.S. officials visited Haiti and promised more resources for Haiti's National Police, including another $15 million to help reduce gang violence, which this year has displaced thousands of Haitians who now live in temporary shelters in increasingly unhygienic conditions. Among those who met with Haiti's police chief was Uzra Zeya, U.S. under secretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights. “Dismantling violent gangs is vital to Haitian stability and citizen security,” she recently tweeted.

The Taliban hanged a dead body from a crane parked in a city square in Afghanistan on Saturday in a gruesome display that signaled the hard-line movement’s return to some of its brutal tactics of the past. Taliban officials initially brought four bodies to the central square in the western city of Herat, then moved three of them to other parts of the city for public display, said Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who runs a pharmacy on the edge of the square. Taliban officials announced that the four were caught taking part in a kidnapping earlier Saturday and were killed by police, Seddiqi said. Ziaulhaq Jalali, a Taliban-appointed district police chief in Herat, said later that Taliban members rescued a father and son who had been abducted by four kidnappers after an exchange of gunfire. He said a Taliban fighter and a civilian were wounded by the kidnappers, and that the kidnappers were killed in crossfire. Read: Islamic State militants claim attacks on Taliban An Associated Press video showed crowds gathering around the crane and peering up at the body as some men chanted. “The aim of this action is to alert all criminals that they are not safe,” a Taliban commander who did not identify himself told the AP in an on-camera interview conducted in the square. Since the Taliban overran Kabul on Aug. 15 and seized control of the country, Afghans and the world have been watching to see whether they will re-create their harsh rule of the late 1990s, which included public stonings and limb amputations of alleged criminals, some of which took place in front of large crowds at a stadium. After one of the Taliban’s founders said in an interview with The Associated Press this past week that the hard-line movement would once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, the U.S. State Department said such acts “would constitute clear gross abuses of human rights.” Spokesman Ned Price told reporters Friday at his briefing that the United States would “stand firm with the international community to hold perpetrators of these — of any such abuses — accountable.” Read: Taliban replace ministry for women with ‘virtue’ authorities The Taliban’s leaders remain entrenched in a deeply conservative, hard-line worldview, even if they are embracing technological changes, such as video and mobile phones. “Everyone criticized us for the punishments in the stadium, but we have never said anything about their laws and their punishments,” Mullah Nooruddin Turabi said in the AP interview. “No one will tell us what our laws should be. We will follow Islam and we will make our laws on the Quran.” Also Saturday, a roadside bomb hit a Taliban car in the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, wounding at least one person, a Taliban official said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. The Islamic State group affiliate, which is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan, has said it was behind similar attacks in Jalalabad last week that killed 12 people. The person wounded in the attack is a municipal worker, Taliban spokesperson Mohammad Hanif said.

Hundreds of Nigerian girls abducted last week from a boarding school in the country's northwest have been released, a state governor said Tuesday, ending the latest in a spate of such kidnappings in the West African nation.