Sahil Saeed: Mammoth police operation across several countries

AS HE nonchalantly kicked around a football with his father on the lawn of the British High Commission in Islamabad, Sahil Saeed was blissfully unaware of the money and resources that had gone into securing his safe release.

A family holiday turned to disaster when the five-year-old was captured at gunpoint in the early hours of 4 March during a robbery at the home of his grandmother, Taseem, in Jhelum, part of the Pakistani region of Punjab.

Over the next two weeks, investigators from Pakistan and Britain worked alongside their counterparts in Spain and France, as well as officials from Interpol.

In the wake of Sahil's capture, a phone call was made to his father, Raja Naqqash Saeed, giving him three days' notice to go to Manchester before travelling on to Paris to pay a 110,000 ransom for his release. The call was later traced by Interpol to Spain, and authorities there were alerted.

Despite the wishes of Pakistani authorities, who wanted him to stay in the country as a witness, Mr Saeed returned to Manchester on 8 March, four days after the abduction, as instructed by the kidnappers. The boy's extended family reportedly rallied round to raise the ransom demand, selling jewellery and heirlooms.

On his arrival in Paris, the date of which has not been disclosed, surveillance officers watched as Mr Saeed made the transfer in a McDonald's restaurant on the Place de la Republique, and later witnessed the recipients divide up the cash between a bag and a trolley. French police followed two suspects to the Spanish border, and intelligence reached them that Sahil had been freed.

The youngster, who had his head shaved and was missing a shoe, was found by locals wandering alone in a field about 12 miles from his grandmother's home. With the confirmation of Sahil's safety, armed Spanish police officers raided a flat in Constantini, a small town about 60 miles from Barcelona.

Three people – two Pakistani men and a Romanian woman – were arrested. About 105,000 in cash in a suitcase, a computer and several mobile phones were recovered from the scene.

Miguel Angel, a neighbour, told the Diari de Tarragona newspaper yesterday: "Nothing has ever made us think that they would be involved in anything out of the ordinary. One of them sat at a caf and spent the whole day reading books."

Another neighbour added: "One of them was talking all day long on his mobile phone and always had a Spanish-English dictionary."

Two other people, accused of helping the kidnappers, were arrested in Bobigny, a suburb of the French capital, on Wednesday, but were freed yesterday. A police official says the suspects, a father and son, were related to two people who collected the ransom paid for the boy, but were found to have no links to the crime.

Madrid police chief Commander Serafin Castro said yesterday that the gang that took Sahil from his grandmother's house had planned to rob his family and kidnapped him as an afterthought. The first calls demanding a ransom were traced to Salou, south of Barcelona.

Some reports also suggested that two of the kidnappers had previously worked for security forces.