His prayers over, Javed Mukhtar was preparing for bed when they came.
The 58-year-old Glasgow shopkeeper, still in his pyjamas, was led away at gunpoint by men in combats as his family screamed for his life.
His abduction, the longest in British criminal history, began on the last Friday of September 2006 and ended 25 days later. But his ordeal was only truly over yesterday, when the six men who kidnapped and held him were sentenced.
The campaign to rescue him, Operation Star, was one of the biggest carried out by Scottish police. It involved 800 officers from five forces and cost around £2m, nearly as much as the ransom initially demanded for Mr Mukhtar's release.
But some of Scotland's most senior detectives yesterday said the sentences handed down to the abductors, none of whom had any connection with the country, made every penny worth it.
Graeme Pearson, who leads the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said the message was now clear to gangs south of the border.
"Come to Scotland for half-an-hour to commit serious crime and we will get you the jail," he said yesterday.
The six-man gang - "a band of desperadoes", according to senior investigator Willie Prendergast - were jailed at the High Court in Glasgow.
Darren Wright, 31, mastermind of the crime, received one of the longest sentences: 11 years and three months.
Wright, a former Royal Artillery bombardier from Heywood, Lancashire, claimed on Monday he had developed post-traumatic stress disorder after seeing people shot and handling dead bodies in Afghanistan. Although still criminally responsible for his action, Wright did get two years taken off his sentence because he was suffering from bipolar disorder and depression.
Former Royal Marine Peter Haining, 28, who lived with Wright in Heywood, got 12 years and six months. He took part in the raid with a machine gun strapped across his chest and fired a warning shot from a pistol as Mr Mukhtar was being abducted.
Craig Adams, 23, from Bury, received four years and 10 months for driving the van used in the kidnapping. David Smith, 37, got five years and three months for holding the shopkeeper for eight or nine days in his Heywood home.
Former armed robber Leslie White, 65, spent three weeks making threatening phone calls to Mr Mukhtar's family. He got six years.
A sixth member, 19-year-old Ian Rosales, also from Heywood, was jailed for three years for his part in the gang.
Sentencing the men, Lord Hodge said Mr Mukhtar had gone through an "absolutely terrible experience" and his family had been exposed to a "frightening, prolonged and distressful ordeal".
Mr Mukhtar was released after police left ransom money on the hard shoulder of the M6 near Manchester.
Police are still officially puzzled by the abduction. Wright claimed the intention was to get Mr Mukhtar's son Bilal, who, he alleged, was involved in a carousel VAT fraud.
Mr Mukhtar yesterday said: "I am still not mentally prepared to enjoy my social life and I don't know when my life will be back to normal. These people deserve long imprisonment and I am quite happy justice has been done."
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