Darfur rebels free kidnapped oil workers

November 12, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — A Darfur rebel group on Monday freed five workers, including two foreigners, taken hostage in a rare attack on a Sudanese oil installation almost three weeks ago.

“We handed them over to tribal chiefs this morning who will pass them on to the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) commander Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr said.

He said that the men — an Egyptian, an Iraqi and three Sudanese — were given to tribal chiefs in the town of Majlad in western Kordofan, near the war-ravaged region of Darfur.

Ashr said earlier this month that JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim had given instuctions for the hostages to be freed, following a request from the Egyptian government.

The five were abducted in an attack on a Kordofan oil field on October 23 and the two foreigners named as engineers Ahmed Heyman Mohammed from Iraq and Joseph William Samuel of Egypt.

The rebels had previously made the hostages’ release conditional on their employers’ withdrawal from working with the Khartoum government to develop Sudan’s oil resources.

The rebel group had warned it would attack foreign oil companies and target Chinese firms in particular.

“China is the main supplier of weapons to Sudan, it has always supported the government in the UN Security Council and it hasn’t provided even a single sack of grain to the people of Darfur,” Ashr said earlier this month.

The five workers were seized in an attack on a facility at Defra run by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, a consortium involving China’s CNPC, India’s ONGC, Malaysia’s Petronas and state-owned Sudapet.

The oilfield produces more than half of the country’s output of some 500,000 barrels of oil per day, most of which is exported to China.

(AFP)