Media groups confirm kidnapping in Somalia
August 24, 2008MOGADISHU, Somalia - A Canadian freelance journalist and her Australian colleague remained missing Sunday, a day after they were abducted a few kilometres outside the Somali capital Mogadishu.
Somalia's government has confirmed the kidnapping of Canadian Amanda Lindhout and Australian Nigel Brennan, along with their Somali driver and two guards.
All four were abducted Saturday while travelling to Elasha, some 20 kilometres south of Somalia's war-torn capital, to do a story on war refugees.
Lindhout is a television and print reporter normally based in Baghdad.
Brenna's parents said their son, a freelance photographer, arrived in Africa just over a week ago.
Journalists and humanitarian workers are frequently abducted for ransom in Somalia, one of the world's poorest and most violence-racked countries.
Saturday's reported abduction came during a period of especially heavy fighting in Somalia, including the capture of Kismayo, Somali's third-largest city, by Islamic insurgents.
The National Union of Somali Journalists condemned the kidnappings.
"We are appalled by this cruel abduction of journalists and call for the immediate release of our colleagues who are being held captive because of their noble work for Somali people," Omar Faruk Osman, the union's secretary general, said in a statement Sunday.
Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon said Saturday his government is trying to find out where the journalists and others are being held.
Two of Lindhout's former co-workers say worry turned to shock as the details gradually emerged, confirming the kidnapped woman was indeed "our Amanda."
"First, all we had was the name of Amanda. Nothing else," said Hamed Nematollahi, a news editor for Iran's PressTV.
Lindhout had worked as the 24-hour news agency's Bagdhad correspondent.
"We knew her age," Nematollahi said.
"And I knew that she was in Mogadishu."
Amir Tajik, co-ordinator of the network's program Middle East Today, said he was shocked but at the same time, a bit surprised she'd made it this long without a major incident.
"She was in the most dangerous place for journalists in the world and nothing happened to her," Tajik said, referring to her posting in Bagdhad.
Reporters Without Borders reports 47 journalists were killed in Iraq in 2007, versus eight in Somalia.
Tajik said Lindhout made her PressTV debut on his program in late January of this year but not longer works for the company.
He said he often told her over the phone or online she should pay more attention to her well-being when working under such dangerous conditions. Tajik said he asked her once about her safety precautions while reporting in Bagdhad.
"She said the only security I have is the shirt that I am wearing," Tajik said.
Nematollahi said Lindhout's Facebook page indicated she was in Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 18. Her last status update on the social-networking site was four days later from Mogadishu.
Lindhout's mother, Lorinda, told a national news agency on Saturday her daughter felt it was important to her as a journalist to be in the region.
"She has to be on the frontlines and she has to be with the people to tell their story. And the humanitarian side of everything was, is, huge for Amanda, to bring that to the light, so that people can help."
Ajos Mohamed Nor, who works at Hotel Shamo in Mogadishu, where the two journalists were staying, said they did not return at 11 a.m. local time Saturday, as planned, after a brief trip outside the capital.
The reporters, their Somali driver and two Somali guards were abducted on the way to see people displaced by the violence in Mogadishu and now living outside the city, said Abdihakim Haji, the brother-in-law of Abdifatah Elmi, one of the two guards.
Haji said he knew about the abduction because it occurred while he was talking with Elmi on his cellphone .
About halfway there, "I heard a voice ordering them to turn the car in a different direction," Haji said, recalling the last conversation he had with his brother-in-law.
"My brother, in a low tone, was trying not to answer my inquiries but made me understood that they were caught in a difficult situation. I realized that things had changed and then their voices disappeared," Haji said in a telephone interview from Mogadishu.
Several family members reached in Red Deer, Alta., on Saturday said they had no comment on Lindhout's abduction.
Jeremy Kroeker, a Canadian who met Lindhout in Syria last winter, said his friend is an experienced freelance journalist who had spent extensive time in conflict areas.
"Wherever she is right now, I know that she's keeping a positive attitude, because she's an innately positive person," he told The Canadian Press on Saturday.
Lindhout had previously reported from Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of Africa, said Kroeker. He added she had been detained by warriors in Iraq while working for a television station and had been robbed at gunpoint in Africa.
"I don't want to use the word fearless, but she is a courageous person. Of course, there's apprehension and she did speak about that, but she never really used the term fear."
Lindhout reported from conflict zones because of the people living there, Kroeker said.
"She said she was drawn to the passion of the people who were in these zones. In other words, if you're in a zone of conflict, nothing is taken for granted and you live each moment like it was a lifetime of experience."
Lindhout also wrote a weekly column for the Red Deer Advocate newspaper from Iraq and Africa.
"She is an intelligent, caring and adventurous professional who was well aware of the dangers of the regions she frequented," the paper's news editor, John Stewart, said in a release.
"She was also aware that her audience was keenly interested in her world perspective and she worked bravely to bring them that perspective."
