Nigerian troops were reported to be massing for an assault to try to free hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by a militant Islamist group.

The moment that Mary Quin thought she would die was in a gunfight with an AK-47 jammed into her spine.

A 10-year-old British girl was sexually assaulted in Praia da Luz in 2005 - possibly by a man who is now a key suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance, the Metropolitan Police have revealed.

A radical Islamic cleric standing trial in New York on global terrorism charges will come face-to-face with a NZ woman caught in a terrifying kidnapping decades ago.

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.

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.

Investigators have released a photo of a man being sought over the attempted abduction of a 13-year-old girl who was dragged off her bicycle into bush near Timaru.

A description of the man accused of dragging a 13-year-old girl off her bicycle and into bushland near Timaru last night has been released.

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 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.

A man who kidnapped a woman and held her captive in a Hamilton shed has been jailed for nearly three years.

Gunmen abducted six Red Cross workers and a Syrian Red Crescent volunteer after stopping their convoy in northwestern Syria, a spokesman said.

'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.