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Hostages 'were treated well'
21/08/2003 09:30 - (SA)
Cologne - Despite searing temperatures, six months constantly on the move and the death of a fellow hostage, 14 Europeans who were kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the Algerian desert said upon their safe return Wednesday that their captors kept them well-fed and treated them humanely.
Some of the freed captives said the good treatment and the mental toughness that led them to seek out the Sahara on motorbikes and in off-road vehicles early this year helped them maintain hope of regaining freedom.
The nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutchman all set off to the remote area of southern Algeria without official guides and despite travel advisories from their governments.
"We are very happy - very relieved - that we survived everything," former hostage Witek Mitko said after returning to his home city of Augsburg.
Stepping down earlier from a German military plane that brought them to Cologne from the West African nation of Mali, the freed captives appeared healthy and in good spirits.
They were among seven groups of 32 Europeans who were captured by Algerian Islamists beginning in February. The 17 others who went free in an Algerian commando raid in May seemed more haggard and ragged after their ordeal.
Algeria has linked the kidnappers to the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, one of two main Islamic extremist movements involved in a more than decade-long uprising in Algeria after the results of elections that would have put Islamic parties in power were thrown out.
It is believed, Michaela Spitzer, a 45-year-old mother of two children, succumbed to heat stroke in late June and was buried in the desert.
Fearing the Algerian military would launch another raid, the hostage-takers decided in June to push the tourists on an arduous journey through the desert. Moving constantly and sleeping on hard ground, the hostages lacked adequate water to withstand the searing temperatures.
Sadly, Chrobog said, conditions improved just after Spitzer's death.
"One day later and it wouldn't have happened," he said. German officials have the coordinates of her burial site and plan to retrieve her body.
Mitko said the captors did not mistreat the hostages. He pointed to his own fit waistline as proof they were well-fed on a diet of macaroni, rice, semolina, bread and "bad water".
Day after day they were forced to drive hundreds of kilometres through the sand. "When the cars couldn't go any further, we had to walk," Mitko said.
"There were about 40 kidnappers in all...ranging from very unfriendly to very friendly people," another of the freed Germans, Rainer Bracht, told ARD television. "Some of them were fantastic" - for example, securing extra bread for the hostages, he added.
"It was made clear to us on the first day that we personally were not seen as enemies but as a means of extorting money," he said.
Upon reaching Mali, the captors felt secure enough to open negotiations with local Tuareg tribesmen, Chrobog said. After weeks of negotiations, the hostages were finally informed late Monday they would be freed.
"At first, we couldn't believe it, because from time to time we had thought it's over," ex-hostage Kurt Schuster said.
The group was handed over to Malian officials and escorted 595km overland from the far northern desert town of Tessalit to Gao, where a German military plane flew them to the Malian capital Bamako.
There, they were received by President Amadou Toumani Toure before departing for Germany for reunions with family members - or onward journeys to Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Fritz-Hans Schwarzenbach, 77, the grandfather of the youngest hostage, 18-year-old Silja Staehli, carried three sunflowers to greet her in Zurich, Switzerland.
"The first symbolises our joy, the second our relief and the third our thanks," he said.
The German government deferred questions about persistent rumours that millions of euros (dollars) were paid to free the hostages, who some German politicians are suggesting should help pay for their rescue.
A Tuareg negotiator, Mohamed Ag Muhamed, told APTN in Bamako that no ransom was paid.
- AP
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