Baalbek Teen Released after Four-Days of Captivity

A Baalbek teenager has been released on Sunday after being kidnapped for four days, reported the National News Agency.

Ziad Khaled Abou Esper, 16, was apparently released after the security forces’ frequent raids in the Baalbek area forced the kidnappers to let him go, reported NNA.

Esper was released on the road leading to the town of al-Jamaliya, north of Baalbek.

The captors contacted the boy’s father to pick him up, where he was found cold and shivering in the rain.

Esper was kidnapped on Wednesday night from his father’s cow farm in the town of Adous in Baalbek by three armed men riding in an SUV.

They had demanded a $150,000 ransom even though the father did not have such funds because his farm had been heavily damaged in a storm in 2010.

His father, Qassem Abou Esper, thanked the security forces and various political, religious, and social leaderships for their efforts to release his son.

The kidnappers remain at large.