Italy - Somalia

Italian hostages freed in Somalia

Tuesday 05 August 2008

Two Italian aid workers held hostage in Somalia since May have been released by their kidnappers. A Somali involved in the negotiations said a $700,000 ransom was paid, a claim denied by Italian authorities.

Somali kidnappers freed two Italian aid workers who had been held hostage in the chaotic Horn of Africa country since May, local sources and the Italian government said on Tuesday.
 
One Somali elder involved in the negotiations said a ransom of between $700,000 and $1 million had been paid, but the Italian authorities denied that.
 
In Rome, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the two aid workers -- a man and a woman -- were in good health. The Italian Foreign Ministry said they had arrived in Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya.
 
Jolanda Occhipinti and Giuliano Paganini were abducted on May 21 when Somali gunmen stormed the offices of the Rome-based group, Cooperazione Italiana Nord Sud (CINS).
 
Mohamed Hussein, a worker at Mogadishu's international airport, said he saw the Italians freed on Tuesday.
 
"They were brought in a car with masked faces wearing dirty clothes which looked like they hadn't been washed since they were abducted three months ago," Hussein told Reuters.
 
Paganini was quoted by his wife as saying shortly after his release, according to Italy's ANSA news agency: "It's Ok, we're well. More than that, I can't say."
 
The Italian government denied any knowledge of a ransom.
 
"The Foreign Ministry is not aware of any payment of ransom for their release," said ministry spokesman Pasquale Ferrara.
 
Suspicion for kidnappings in Somalia generally falls on clan militia and Islamist insurgents who are fighting the interim government and its Ethiopian military allies.
 
Gunmen are still holding hostage two other foreign aid workers -- a Kenyan and a Briton -- and several other Somali humanitarian staff abducted earlier this year.
 
The kidnappings and attacks in Somalia are hampering the work of aid agencies at a time when U.N. officials say the crisis ranks as one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters along with Sudan's Darfur region, Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
More than 1 million of Somalia's 9 million people scrape a living as internal refugees, and their plight has been worsened
by record food prices, hyper-inflation and drought.
 
The insurgency has killed more than 8,000 civilians since the start of last year, according to a local human rights group.