Five members of a British embassy group missing for two weeks in a remote part of Ethiopia have been released and are safe and well, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said on Tuesday.
”I am delighted to able to tell you that the five were released earlier today [Tuesday] to the Eritrean authorities and have just arrived in the care of our embassy in Asmara,” she said.
”We have informed the families of all five. They were, of course, very relieved and are looking forward to being reunited with them,” she added in a statement.
She added that they were released ”with the help of the Eritrean government” and added that Ethiopians who went missing with them have not yet been located.
The five — three British men and two women, one with French and one with British-Italian dual nationality — are all linked to the British embassy in Addis Ababa.
London has suggested that local rebel groups carried out the kidnapping of the group and their Ethiopian guides and drivers, but local elders say Eritrean soldiers were behind the abduction.
The five are: Peter Rudge, First Secretary at the British embassy; Jonathan Ireland, an administrative aide; Malcolm Smart and Laure Beaufils who both work for Britain’s International Development Ministry; and Rosanna Moore, wife of the head of the British council in the Ethiopian capital, according to British officials.
Asked if they had been found in Eritrea, Beckett said: ”We don’t know. There are different reports about where they were held,” while adding: ”They were released with the help of the Eritrean government.”
She said the missing five had not yet been debriefed about where they were held or the conditions of their capture.
”The first concern has been to establish their health,” she said.
”Broadly they are all in good health,” she added.
Eritrea has repeatedly denied involvement in the abduction. Relations have been strained since Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993.
The British Foreign Office said Monday that officials were working ”around the clock” to try to secure the safe release of the tour group abducted in the remote north-eastern Ethiopian desert on March 1.
Beckett had said last Friday that the group was ”OK”, while Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told reporters that the group was ”safe” and around the remote desert Danakil area in Afar, according to local elders.
Asked on Tuesday if Afar rebels could have been responsible for kidnapping the five, Beckett added: ”Well, that has been the thinking earlier, but we haven’t had any confirmation of that.”
On Monday Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Ethiopia had a ”pretty good idea” of where they were, saying that their abductors had not specifically targeted them.
”I don’t believe they were personally targeted; they have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time,” the Ethiopian leader said. — AFP
