{"id":880,"date":"2007-08-13T13:39:28","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T18:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/880"},"modified":"2007-08-13T13:39:28","modified_gmt":"2007-08-13T18:39:28","slug":"note-to-self-accept-no-proposals-of-marriage-from-guys-in-mali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/880","title":{"rendered":"Note To Self: Accept No Proposals Of Marriage From Guys In Mali&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2007\/08\/13\/net_groom_kidnapped\/\"><strong>Net bride Aussie kidnapped in Mali<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>An Australian farmer who thought he&#8217;d found his perfect soulmate online got a nasty surprise when he travelled to Mali to meet his fianc&eacute;e &#8211; a reception committee of &quot;machete-armed bandits&quot; who held him for almost two weeks demanding an AU$100,000 ransom.<\/p>\n<p>Des Gregor, 56, flew last month to the impoverished African nation&#8217;s capital Bamako in search of &quot;Natacha&quot; and a dowry of AU$100,000 in gold bars, Reuters reports. However, he was picked up at the airport by a carload of ne&#8217;er-do-wells who whisked him to an apartment full of armed men.<\/p>\n<p>The kidnappers gave Gregor &quot;a good belting&quot; and threatened to chop off his arms and legs unless his family coughed the aforementioned ransom. He recounted: &quot;I was tied, bound by the legs, and that was only probably for a couple of days because they knew that I was going to cooperate. There was always one bloke sleeping at the door, there was no way out.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The gang&#8217;s plan unravelled after 12 days when Oz and Mali police duped them into letting their hostage enter the Canadian embassy to collect the cash.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>No dear&#8230;you come over <em>Here <\/em>and meet <em>My<\/em> family&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Net bride Aussie kidnapped in Mali An Australian farmer who thought he&#8217;d found his perfect soulmate online got a nasty surprise when he travelled to Mali to meet his fianc&eacute;e &#8211; a reception committee of &quot;machete-armed bandits&quot; who held him for almost two weeks demanding an AU$100,000 ransom. Des Gregor, 56, flew last month to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-jackass-chronicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}