Two French aid workers abducted in the Central African Republic and held for four months were freed on Sunday in Darfur, the Sudanese region gripped by civil war and a wave of kidnappings.
Olivier Denis and Olivier Frappe were working for a French non-governmental organization (NGO), Triangle Generation Humanitaire, when they were kidnapped last November in the Central African Republic.
They arrived late on Sunday in the Sudanese capital, where Denis spoke of how the pair had feared for their lives at the start of their ordeal.
“There were [threats], then the tone calmed down,” a long-bearded Denis told journalists at a Khartoum military hospital. “Sometimes they [the kidnappers] started again when they got impatient. Initially, we feared for our lives.”
“We were not mistreated, but obviously lots of things go through one’s mind,” said Denis, adding that “there were two of us, which is lucky.”
In a statement issued in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed “delight that they have been freed.”
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said earlier: “I fully share the happiness of their families and loved ones, and the NGO, with whom the foreign ministry’s crisis center has been in permanent contact since their abduction.”
Sarkozy also called for freedom for International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) worker Gauthier Lefevre, who was abducted in Darfur last October.
The French-British dual national was kidnapped in West Darfur near the border with Chad.
A shadowy armed group in Darfur called the Freedom Eagles of Africa said in November it abducted Denis, Frappe and Red Cross worker Laurent Maurice, as well as two other aid workers, a Frenchwoman and a Canadian, freed last April.
Maurice was released last month after 89 days in captivity.
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