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Kidnapped journo is 'fine'
17/12/2007 11:44 - (SA)
Nairobi, Kenya - A French journalist who was kidnapped by armed gunmen in northern Somalia is "safe and fine" and could be released soon, the region's deputy governor said on Monday.
"We have sent clan elders to secure the release of the journalist," Yusuf Mumin Bidde told The Associated Press by telephone from Somalia's Puntland region. "He is safe and fine. We are hopeful that he will be released soon."
Bidde refused to comment when asked how he knows the reporter's condition, saying it was a security issue.
The reporter, identified by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders as cameraman Gwen Le Gouil, was kidnapped on Sunday morning in the semiautonomous region in northern Somalia. The area is relatively stable in a country beset by chaos and violence, but in recent months it has increasingly become associated with rampant piracy off its coast.
Without citing sources, Reporters Without Borders said on Sunday it appeared Le Gouil was kidnapped by human traffickers demanding US$70 000. Le Gouil was working on a story on trafficking in illegal migrants.
French authorities were in contact with "those who seem to be the kidnappers," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday from Paris. "I hope that the contact will not be lost and I hope that it only concerns a demand for ransom," he said in a television broadcast.
Le Gouil was kidnapped just outside the port city of Bossaso, which is the main departure point for tens of thousands of Somalis who pay smugglers to ferry them across the Gulf of Aden. The destination is Yemen and onward to richer Arab countries, but the trip can be deadly.
The Bossaso-Yemen course also is part of a well-known arms smuggling route.
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