Print

Mail

wiki links

Desert hostages released by captors

Fourteen Europeans taken hostage months ago in the Sahara desert have been released by their captors and were expected in the Malian capital yesterday, Seydou Sissouma, adviser to the Malian president, said Monday.

"The hostages were freed shortly after 4:00pm [1600 GMT]. They are still in the region where they were being held [and] are now under Malian responsibility," Sissouma told reporters by telephone.

They were expected yesterday in Bamako, he added.

Iyad Ag Ghali, the Malian mediator who worked to orchestrate their release, told reporters the Europeans were "totally free", while German and Swiss officials also confirmed the news.

The trekkers -- nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutchman -- were among a group of 32 Europeans taken hostage by Algerian Islamic extremists up to six months ago while roaming the Algerian Sahara without guides.

German and Malian officials had announced earlier Monday that efforts to secure their release had reached a crucial final phase, amid conflicting reports over whether they had already been handed over to Malian mediators.

In Gao, eastern Mali, a Malian aircraft was awaiting take-off orders Monday evening, to pick up the freed hostages in the northeastern region of Tessalit.

A German military plane was expected to fly to Gao yesterday to bring the Europeans back to the Malian capital, officials said.

The Transall plane had been to Gao twice before, on Sunday and Monday, in the hope of picking up the freed hostages but was forced to fly back to the capital each evening to change crew.

Germany's pointman in the crisis, in Bamako since Sunday, separately confirmed that the hostages had been released and were expected yesterday in the Malian capital.

"The president [of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure] has told me that all the hostages have been released and are on their way to Bamako," Juergen Chrobog the German state secretary for foreign affairs, told a press conference at Bamako airport.

"They are expected [yesterday] in the afternoon," he said.

"After that, we will head to Germany," said Chrobog, who flew to Bamako aboard a German army medical plane with a view to repatriating the hostages.

"This is a great day for us, a great day for the German government," Chrobog told the German public television channel ZDF.

However, he refused to comment on the state of health of the 14 tourists, including the nine Germans among them.

The Swiss foreign ministry also confirmed the hostages' release, although it was unable to say when the four Swiss travellers would be returning home.

"We can confirm that the 14 hostages are safe and in the hands of the Malian authorities," foreign ministry spokesman Simon Hubacher said.

Seventeen of the original 32 hostages had been rescued in a raid by Algerian security forces on May 13, while the remaining travellers were held for up to six months, and one 46-year-old German woman, Michaela Spitzer, died in captivity, reportedly from heatstroke.

Most of the hostages are in their 30s or 40s, the youngest being two 19-year-old Swiss nationals and the eldest a German couple, aged 62 and 64.

Their abductors are thought to belong to an Islamic extremist faction called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which is allegedly linked to the al-Qaeda network.

The figure behind the hostage-taking has been identified as Amari Saifi, an Algerian army renegade known as "Abderrezak the Para", and one of the leaders of the GSPC.
This story has been viewed 1738 times.