Estate agent jailed for 'revenge' kidnapping

A sacked estate agent who hoped to raise a £200,000 ransom by kidnapping and torturing her former boss was jailed for 10 years.

Ambreen Gul, 23, was so angry when she was fired that she recruited another sacked colleague and two other men to take revenge.

Waqas Malik, 48, of Ilford, Essex, was lured to Gul's flat and kicked and punched in a seven-hour ordeal. As he screamed: "What have I done, what have I done?", one of his attackers ordered him to "shut up or be shot", Southwark Crown Court in London was told. One captor said he and his 13-year-old son would be killed unless he raised the ransom.

He phoned his wife in an attempt to raise the cash but the plot went wrong when he was given a sedative, which made him ill. He was driven, barely conscious, to his home and left there.

Gul, of Hackney, east London, and three men were convicted of charges including blackmail and false imprisonment. Her accomplices were sentenced to between seven years nine months and eight and a half years.