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Captors free 19 after receiving ransoms

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-24 08:02

Related readings: 17 abducted teens return from Myanmar

Police said all 19 people reportedly kidnapped to Myanmar from a northern Chinese city have been freed after their families paid ransoms to captors who forced the mostly teenage victims to gamble themselves into deep debt.

Qiao Yabiao, the last of the victims known to have come from Yuncheng, a small city in north Shanxi province, returned to China on Friday.

He and the others were lured to Yunnan province in search of work. They were taken to neighboring Myanmar and forced to gamble, Xinhua said.