LYON: French prosecutors in the city of Lyon said Friday they had charged and detained seven people over the alleged kidnapping of a Swiss man for a cryptocurrency ransom.
The seven suspects — six adults and a 17-year-old — were charged and taken into custody after investigating magistrates in Lyon questioned them on Thursday.
The prosecutors’ office did not specify the charges, but it had said on Thursday they were being questioned for kidnapping, false imprisonment and extortion by an armed gang.
Officers of the elite GIGN police unit freed the 22-year-old man last Sunday in a raid in the city of Valence, southeast France, the prosecutors office told AFP.
He had been abducted the previous Thursday and once the alarm was raised, around 150 gendarmes were mobilized in the operation to find him.
