Mali hostages freed

2003-08-18 22:01

Sadio Kante

Bamako - Islamic extremists freed 14 European tourists on Monday after six months of captivity in the Sahara Desert, authorities in the West African nation of Mali said, closing an ordeal that saw one other captive die of heatstroke.

The 14 - nine Germans, four Swiss and a Dutchman - were freed late on Monday, said Seydou Sissouma, spokesperson for Mali President Amadou Toure, whose government has been working with Germany and others for the releases.

The Europeans were turned over to Mali government officials, Sissouma said. They would spend the night in the far northern desert city of Gao, and be flown to the Mali capital of Bamako on Tuesday, he said.

The presidential spokesperson refused to discuss the condition of the hostages, or answer any other questions about them.

Authorities have made no comment on ransom, or any other possible demands for the release.

Jets on standby

Mali had put a government jet on standby in Gao, ready to start bringing the hostages home.

Germany, whose diplomats have been active in negotiations, also had readied two air force jets, one of them a hospital airship.

The hostages' saga began in mid-February, when kidnappers captured a total of 32 Europeans in the desert of neighbouring Algeria.

In May, 17 hostages were freed in a raid on a desert hideout by Algerian security forces, but 15 others remained captives and were believed to have been taken to neighbouring Mali by their abductors.

One of their group, a German woman, died of heat stroke and was buried by her abductors in June.

Algerian authorities say the kidnappers are linked to the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which has been linked to al-Qaeda.

The group is generally seen as the less bloody of one of two main Islamic extremist movements behind a more than decade-long insurgency in Algeria.

'Abderrazak the Paratrooper'

The tourists were believed held on orders of Salafist's No 2 leader, a former army paratrooper named Amari Saichi, and known by the nom de guerre, "Abderrazak the Paratrooper."

Saichi deserted his military barracks for the Algerian bush in 1991, at the start of the Islamic uprising.

He is believed responsible for many attacks against the nation's military. By some accounts, his group split from Algeria's larger Islamic insurgency in protest of that group's many attacks on civilians.

German media had reported through the weekend that release of the Europeans was imminent.

Exhausted and weak

German television reported on Sunday that the captives were freed by their captors and turned over to intermediaries, but said the release hit a hitch when the group failed to turn up as expected at an airstrip in northern Mali.

Germany's ZDF television, reporting from Bamako before the release, said the hostages were exhausted and weakened, but healthy under the circumstances. However, one of the tourists has developed diabetes, ZDF said.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Walter Lindner said there was no sign that any captives were life-threateningly ill.

Freed hostages have said their captors broke them up into groups and dragged them to new hiding places every night.

Food ran out - first canned food from the tourists' supply, then rations of cereal. Medicine ran low and mosquito bites turned into festering wounds.

After Mali, the tourists were expected to be flown to a military airport in Cologne.

- AP