Robbers posing as plumbers kidnapped the daughter of a cash van driver and demanded the vehicle's contents as ransom in a heist that could have netted them over 20 million euros, investigators said Friday.
Sudanese security forces have freed a Swiss aid worker who was kidnapped in Darfur last month in an overnight operation in the war-torn region, a Sudanese official said on Wednesday.
Switzerland is struggling to resolve the case of a Swiss woman kidnapped for a second time by jihadists in Mali, Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Burkhalter said in an interview published on Sunday.
Private Mauritanian news agency Al-Akhbar said on Tuesday that it had received a video purportedly from the Al-Qaeda-linked Emirate of the Sahara group claiming responsibility for this month's kidnapping of Swiss woman Beatrice Stockly in northern Mali.
Gunmen abducted a Swiss woman overnight
Thursday to Friday in Timbuktu in northern Mali, where she had lived for several years and was previously held by extremists, official sources say.
The Swiss government on Wednesday afternoon issued a statement of “deepest condolences” to the families of victims of the attack on the editorial board of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris that left 12 people dead and many more injured.
More than 250 people took part in a march in Lausanne on Monday afternoon to protest against the judicial system in the wake of the death of Marie, a 19-year-old woman killed last Wednesday after being kidnapped.
Police discovered the lifeless body of Marie in the Torny-Le-Grand region of the canton of Fribourg, less than two days after the 19-year-old woman was abducted on Monday by a 36-year-old convicted murderer under house arrest, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
Officers on Tuesday arrested a 36-year-old convicted criminal, alleged to have abducted a 19-year-old woman, after he crashed in a small car following a high-speed chase by police in the canton of Fribourg.
A 65-year-old woman from the canton of Zurich was sentenced on Tuesday to four years in jail for abducting her severely disabled husband to India and abandoning him there, where he died, to save costs for his care.
<p>A Swiss woman who was abducted in rebel-held Timbuktu in northern Mali last week was released Tuesday and handed over to troops from Burkina Faso.</p>
<p>Switzerland's foreign ministry said Monday it was in contact with a group holding a Swiss woman abducted <span class="il">Mali</span>'s rebel-held Timbuktu last week.</p>
<p>A Swiss woman abducted last week in rebel-held Timbuktu in northern Mali has been snatched from her captors by armed Islamists who want to free her, several security sources said Sunday.</p>
<p>A Swiss couple held captive by the Pakistani Taliban for over eight months were flown back to the capital on Thursday, smiling and waving to the cameras and apparently in good health.</p>
<p>The Taliban have released two Swiss tourists kidnapped at gunpoint more than eight months ago while travelling through Pakistan's dangerous south-west, the army said on Thursday.</p>
<p>A 34-year-old father of two has been sentenced to eight years in prison after he kidnapped his six and seven-year-old sons, took them to Tunisia, and told their mother to pay him 170,000 francs ($182,000) if she wanted to get her children back.</p>
