Dutch aid worker freed

2004-04-11 11:56

Makhachkala - Arjan Erkel, a Dutch medical aid worker kidnapped 20 months ago near Russia's war-torn Chechnya republic, has been freed.

"He has been freed, he is in Makhachkala," (the regional capital of Dagestan), Mark Walsh, a spokesperson in Moscow for the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF) aid group, said.

"He has met someone from MSF already and he seems in reasonably good health," he said.

Erkel, 35, who headed the local mission of MSF in Dagestan, was kidnapped on the evening of August 12, 2002 in Makhachkala by unknown assailants who bundled him into a car.

Top Dagestani interior ministry spokesperson Abdulmanap Musayev told a news conference that Erkel was set free in a pre-dawn operation on Sunday, mounted jointly by the local FSB (ex-KGB) intelligence agency and ministry forces.

No ransom paid

The MSF spokesperson said he could not comment on whether Erkel had been freed in a rescue mission but he said no ransom had been paid. "As far as we are concerned, there was no ransom," he said.

The head of MSF last month hit out at what he called the involvement of Russian and Dagestani officials in the kidnapping of Erkel -- allegations that were angrily denied in Moscow.

MSF President Jean-Herve Bradol described the abduction as part of a campaign of "pressure and intimidation aimed at silencing people who still talk about Chechnya, where for the past decade a crime on an exceptional scale has been taking place."

- AFP