/ 5 December 1999

TOURIST IN ABDUCTION NIGHTMARE

A 20-year-old Dutch tourist was reportedly abducted from a city hotel five hours after arriving in Cape Town this week, taken on a horror ride, tortured and held captive overnight in a Langa shack. Leahauda von Greunen, who arrived in Cape Town from Mauritius at 3pm on Thursday, said she was making a telephone call in the lobby of the Tulip Inn in Strand Street at 8pm when she was grabbed from behind. The Saturday Argus reports that Von Greunen was dragged into an alcove at the hotel and then carried to a bakkie where she was placed under a tarpaulin. “There were people in the front of the bakkie and about three men on the back, I thought I was going to die.” Her attackers burnt her with cigarettes and held her arms as they dragged her behind the bakkie while driving through Langa.