Auckland crime figure Petar Vitali has been sentenced to five years and six months in prison for assaulting a young woman who believed she was his biological daughter.

Notorious Auckland crime figure Petar Vitali will be sentenced today for a brutal attack on a young woman who looked on him as a father.

British police seek help from Portuguese to detain alleged burglars at Algarve resort.

The bogus sign language interpreter at the Mandela memorial service was in a group who burned two men to death in 2003, say a cousin and three friends.

A man who strangled his partner in the back of a van near Nelson while her 5-year-old daughter sat in the front seat has been sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.

A man has been arrested who was wanted by police in connection with an alleged attempted abduction of a 13-year-old Timaru girl.

Three teens accused of holding three young men at knifepoint and forcing them to drive around Wellington for hours are yet to enter a plea for kidnapping charges.

Three teenagers will appear in court in Lower Hutt today charged with kidnapping after a car-jacking which lasted about five hours on Saturday night.

A US woman who lived in numerous countries, including New Zealand, while on the run for 20 years for the alleged kidnapping of her daughter, has been arrested in Australia.

Three teenagers were allegedly held up at knife-point, assaulted and forced to drive around Wellington by a younger group of teens during a five-hour kidnapping ordeal overnight.

A passenger travelling 180km/h in a car put her feet against the dash as she fought to protect herself and a kidnapped 15-month-old baby.

A Tauranga man has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail for kidnapping and bashing a man who had just accidentally killed his 18-year-old friend.

Two men have been charged with abduction after they allegedly tried to drag a 22-year-old woman into a van at 9.30pm in Dunedin on Saturday night.

In a radical shift in thinking, a man spotted carrying a young girl in his arms has now emerged as the key suspect for the abduction of Madeleine McCann.

'Why didn't I cry out for help? Fear.' Ten years on and in a new book Elizabeth Smart details her ordeal after she was snatched from her bedroom by a crazed preacher.

A hitchhiker was forced to walk more than 4km into a forest where she was sexually assaulted and murdered, before her killer took his own life.

Phillip Layton Edwards has today pleaded not guilty to kidnapping a toddler.

Convicted killer Phillip Layton Edwards has appeared in court this afternoon charged with kidnapping a toddler.

A businessman at the centre of a citizen's arrest case has been found guilty of kidnapping but cleared of assault.

A jury is deciding whether a Christchurch drilling boss who detained two thieves caught siphoning fuel did so legally and with reasonable force.

Christchurch jurors waiting for a trial to begin are rudely interrupted by a woman who burst into the jury room and locked herself in the toilet.

A woman who suffered horrific injuries after she was dragged behind a car at high speed has fallen out with her family.

A convicted thief caught red-handed siphoning diesel from a drilling company was bashed by up to 10 "unknown Polynesian males", kidnapped and dumped in a river, before the company boss handed him over to police, a court has been told.