Sudan hopeful for release of Canadian, French hostages
April 13, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud today announced that the government expects the release of two abducted aid workers in the near future.
Armed men had kidnapped a pair of women from their office in southern Darfur on the night of April 4.
The minister told SMC, a news service close to the security and intelligence service, that the security committee in South Darfur state had made good efforts to secure the release of the Canadian and French workers. He expected these efforts would lead to their release in the near future.
Aide médicale internationale (AMI), the employer of the abducted workers, is reportedly playing a direct role in the negotiations. According to the Montreal Gazette, the Canadian government is in touch with the French aid agency and is trying to help secure the release of the Canadian hostage, a Canadian Foreign Affairs Department official said Monday.
But Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Lisa Monette declined to release any information about Canadian Stephanie Jodoin, fearing for her safety.
Jodoin told Agence France-Presse by phone on Sunday that she and fellow hostage Claire Dubois are being treated well, but they don’t know where they are being held.
Different sources report conflictingly that the kidnappers are either former janjaweed of the Abbala tribe, Fellata tribesmen or also a group calling itself “Falcons for the Liberation of Africa.”
The identity and affiliations of the kidnappers were further obscured when they demanded that the French organization Zoe’s Ark face a re-trial in Chad, where six Zoe’s Ark employees had been convicted but then pardoned on March 31, 2008 by Chadian President Idriss Deby.
The kidnappers have been in contact with a number of international news organizations.
These captives are the latest victims of a new, more intense round of violence against aid workers in Darfur. Four employees of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), three of them foreigners, were kidnapped March 11 at gunpoint by uniformed border guards, according to an eyewitness who spoke with Radio Dabanga.
An employee of a Canadian-headquartered aid group was shot dead March 23 when gunmen entered his living quarters, only days after being beaten in a road-side ambush.
AMI itself lost two Sudanese colleagues in February, gunned down by men on horseback; others were wounded.
During the past three years (from 2006 through 2008), more incidents of major violence against aid workers occurred in Sudan than in any other country in the world, according to a report released Wednesday by the London-based Overseas Development Institute.
(ST)