Each time Abul Bassier calls the number stored on his cell phone, he says a Thai man asks whether he has the money, then hangs up when the invariably negative answer is given.

Indeed, that is what this video of Bonnie Bassier, laughing and talking with her teams, shows.

This study included the cataloguing of a private library of a local Capetonian, Imam Manie Bassier.

So Bonnie Bassier and her team exploited that bioluminescence, which allowed them to decipher the bacteria’s chemical “conversation”.

About two weeks later, Abul Bassier received a phone call from a man in Thailand demanding money for his brother’s release.

Abul Bassier, a 36-year-old schoolteacher whose brother and father were killed when a mob razed their home in Sittwe’s Bu May quarter, says his younger brother took his chances on a boat trip in March.