Screen shot of the video posted by the FRC shows the Swiss hostages surrounded by gunmen
PAKISTAN – A Bern couple kidnapped in Pakistan Friday 1 July are reportedly “alive and well” says the FATA Research Centre, FRC, a “non partisan and non-political research organization” based in Islamabad, which has obtained two videos of the hostages.
In one of the videos posted by the FRC, David, 28, a police officer in Bern, calls in English for the release of a “Dr Aafia from US custody” and for the release of Taliban prisoners from Pakistani custody in exchange for the couple’s release.
“Let them go! We are in danger,” says the man.”If you don’t do this, it is possible that we will die,” he added.
In a second video, the Swiss couple is seen surrounded by masked gunmen.
The couple speaking in Swiss-German requests the release of Taliban prisoners. It is believed that one of the videos was shot in late August, the other, in late September.
David, and his traveling companion, Daniela, 31, were kidnapped as they returned to Switzerland, in the Balochistan province, which has borders with Afghanistan and Iran, an area considered dangerous.
The Swiss government advises against non-essential travel there.
Video of the FRC Read more…
France announced that 66-year-old Marie Dedieu, who was kidnapped on October 1 from her beach house in Kenya, and taken to Somalia, has died in the hands of her captors, most probably because they had refused to provide her medication.
The kidnappers seem to have tried to sell the remains. “It could not be more despicable,” French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said.
“Those who committed this unspeakable act are nothing but a gang of barbarians,” President Nicolas Sarkozy told AFP.
Links to: Yahoo News
PARIS, FRANCE – The French foreign ministry has announced the death of Marie Dedieu, 66, who was kidnapped the night of 30 September from her home on the small island of Manda, then taken to Somalia. Dedieu, who used a wheelchair, was taking medication to treat a cardiac problem and cancer; the wheelchair and the drugs were not taken by her kidnappers and the French government has surmised that she died as a result.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero said in a statement Wednesday 19 October that her kidnappers had refused to pass along the medicine the French government had supplied, and this most likely resulted in her death. Foreign Minister Alain Juppé called her death an act of “barbarism, violence and unspeakable inhumanity.”
Le Monde reports that she was an active and militant feminist in the 1970s in France. She moved to Kenya in the 1990s.
Update 5 July BERN, SWITZERLAND – ATS news agency, citing a German news agency, says Tuesday that a Bern couple kidnapped in Pakistan Friday 1 July have reportedly been taken by Taliban captors to southern Waziristan province. The Taliban appear to be taking credit for the kidnapping but have not provided any terms for releasing them.
Earlier, AFP reported the pair had been “transferred” across the border into Afghanistan’s tribal belt area, quoting a local Pakistan official. The two tourists, Daniela and David, are the only known cases of Swiss people kidnapped in Pakistan.
The pair were traveling in a van in the Balochistan province, which has borders with Afghanistan and Iran, an area considered dangerous. The Swiss government advises against non-essential travel there.
It appears they may have been planning to return to Switzerland via Iran, although little information is being given out by the official federal Swiss cell set up to deal with the situation.
He works as a police officer in Bern and she followed but did not complete police training; he is 31 and she is 28. Their blue van was found abandoned about 170 east of Quetta, the provincial capital.
Officials told AFP Monday 4 July that no demands have been made by the kidnappers to date, nor is it known who they are.
Links to other sites: Le Temps (Fr), TSR (Fr), The Express Tribune
Swiss “very aware of courage” of Libyan protestors “based on experience”
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government Monday 21 February suspended preparatory work on the tribunal it agreed to with Libya in order to ensure that two Swiss men held hostage by the Libyan government in 2010 would be freed. The announcement came as part of a message strongly condemning the Libyan government for its “targeted violence” marked by an “extreme repression” against its own citizens.
An arbitrator, Philippe Kirsch, was named only six days ago to oversee the tribunal, a sign that the long-stalled tribunal could soon get underway. It was created as a condition by Libya to free two Swiss hostages in 2010 who were taken, it is widely believed in Switzerland, in retaliation for the arrest in Geneva of Hannibal Qadaffi, one of the sons of Libya’s leader.
Swiss told to leave Libya if they can
Switzerland also told its citizens to leave Libya if possible and discouraged Swiss travellers from going to Libya, saying the outcome of the protests is uncertain. Libyan hospitals are overwhelmed and they are short of blood for necessary transfusions, according to all available evidence, Bern said in a Monday statement.
“Given its experience with the regime in Tripoli, Switzerland is very aware of the courage shown by the men and women who have taken to the streets in Libya to cry for their democratic rights,” the Swiss government notes.
Forty-six Swiss citizens are registered with the Swiss embassy in Tripoli, most of them dual nationals, and the government says it is in close contact with each of them.
AFP reports air space over Libya closed
Late Monday an Austrian army officer told news agency AFP that air space over Libya has been closed (not confirmed).
Head of a tiger (Panthera tigris), India (photo: ©2010 Vivek R Sinh, WWF-Canon)
Nyon / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Three of the six students who were working in Assam for the WWF, counting tigers, when they were kidnapped Sunday, have been released unharmed.
The three women were released but the three men abducted with them remain captive. WWF-India says it is working closely with local governments and organizations to secure their release.
Full story, 7 February, GenevaLunch
Head of a tiger (Panthera tigris), India (photo: ©2010 Vivek R Sinh, WWF-Canon)
Update 8 February Nyon / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Three women, student volunteers who were working as part of a WWF project in the eastern Assam province in India, have been released by their kidnappers, WWF-India announced Tuesday 8 February. Three men, also students, were abducted at the same time, and they remain captive.
The six were “abducted from an area near Ultapani in Chirang Reserve Forest on the afternoon of Sunday, February 6, 2011,” the WWF statement says. “These young volunteers were part of the WWF team carrying out tiger habitat occupancy surveys in the area. These young and committed individuals were working towards helping to conserve the important biodiversity of the area for the larger benefit of the local community, the state and the region. Conservation is an apolitical activity that contributes to the well being of people, society and nature.”
WWF-India earlier confirmed to the head office in Gland, near Geneva, that it has been informed that the abducted group is safe:
“The NGO community in Assam has appealed for the safe and immediate release of these volunteers. They have stated that “These volunteers are innocent students from our own native state and educational institutions . . .The NGOs hope that good sense will prevail and the volunteers will be immediately released unharmed in order to enable the civil society organisations and their workers to contribute towards nature conservation . . . especially for the communities living in and around the forested areas.”
The region has seen several kidnappings and killings by three main rebel groups of people who are working to protect nature. The WWF group was reportedly separated by the captors from another nature protection organization: the two had been working together.
A government official has said a “major operation” is currently underway to free those kidnapped. The nationalities of the three men and three women is not known.
The world’s tiger population has fallen from 100,000 to just 3,200 in the past century, with WWF fighting to get governments to back its efforts to save the animals.
Video, India’s IBN TV
Swiss see 102 new int’l child kidnapping, visiting rights cases in 2010
18 children returned home to Switzerland
Photo ©2011 Rohit Acharya, http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhohit/
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Seven is the average age and in 2010 there were 147 of them at the centre of complaints: children who are kidnapped by one parent, or who have one parent refused visitation rights by the other.
Switzerland in 2010 recorded 102 new cases of kidnappings and visiting rights violations under two international agreements. Seventy complaints of kidnapping were filed and 32 of visiting rights violations. More cases were filed from Switzerland by a parent trying to gain access to a child outside the country, 59, than by parents who were abroad, with the child in Switzerland: 42 cases.
The countries filing the largest number of complaints in Switzerland were France (9), Brazil (6), Germany (5) and the United States (4).
Mothers are most often the authors of the crimes: 71 percent in the case of kidnappings and 84 percent for violation of visiting rights.
Eighteen children who had been kidnapped were returned home in 2010. They came mainly from: Belgium Bulgaria, Colombia, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Macedonia, Portugal, Serbia and the United States.
Central Swiss registry pushes for int’l law to include child reps, conciliation
The strange case of Carlina White, who was kidnapped at the age of 19 days and who last week, 23 years later, found her real family, could pose thorny legal questions. The woman suspected of kidnapping her from a hospital in Harlem, New York, and then raising her, has been arrested in Connecticut for violating parole. She was on parole after being convicted of suspected embezzlement. The statute of limitations for kidnap charges in New York might have run out, police there say, and the possibility of the federal government taking on the case is being reviewed.
(Video) US media for two days reported that kidnapped British aid worker Linda Norgrove was likely killed when a suicide vest worn by a captor exploded. Now it appears that she may have been killed by a US hand grenade during a bungled operation to free her. UK Prime Minister David Cameron was given the news by phone Monday, by US General David Petraeus, and it appears the mistake is raising questions about a possible cover-up or at the very least, over the role of US media reports, says the BBC.
ITNews, with David Cameron speaking
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The eight ICRC (International Red Cross) workers kidnapped 9 April were released unharmed Friday 16 April, the Geneva-based humanitarian agency announced. One Swiss and seven Congolese workers were taken in southern Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo but released with help from the United Nations Mission.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s woes with Libya continue this week, with Tripoli postponing the trials of two Swiss businessmen. The two are to stand trial for visa and tax irregularities, Libya has said. They were arrested shortly after the arrest in Geneva in July 2008 of Hannibal Qadaffi, son of the country’s leader. Libya in early January issued a list of reasons why the son should not have been arrested; it continues to argue, as it did in 2008, that he should have received diplomatic immunity.
The son is reported 6 January by Swiss media to have hosted singer Beyoncé for New Year’s Eve festivities at the Nikki Beach Club in Saint-Barthélemy, the Antilles, a week after he avoided police charges in Britain.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -The latest twist in the increasingly tangled tale of client data stolen from HSBC in Geneva comes from the thief himself, formerly known as Hervé Falciani. The former HSBC computer system employee who now lives under a new identity in the south of France told French journalists from Nice Matin that in August 2008 he was kidnapped by two men in a van in Geneva’s Champel district. The men were of unclear Middle Eastern origin, perhaps Israeli, says Falciani, who accuses his Lebanese girlfriend at the time of being part of a plot to discredit him.
The Lebanese link has surfaced following accusations by Switzerland that Falciani was trying to sell the names and other information about bank clients, which he acknowledges he stole, to several governments, notably Lebanon.
Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan were freed Wednesday 25 Novmber after 16 months in captivity in Somalia, where both say they were tortured physically and mentally. Lindhout described her ordeal by phone to the Globe & Mail, saying that in her mind she escaped to Vancouver. Both say their families paid ransoms to the groups who abducted them.
Links to other sites: Canadian TV video, Herald Sun, Australia
The body of Alec Collett, kidnapped in 1985 but not heard from since 1986, has been found in eastern Lebanon, the UN announced 23 November, Monday. Collett, age 63 at the time, was working for UNWRA (Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). He was the first person to be kidnapped in what became a string of abductions in the 1980s in Lebanon. He was traveling in a car near the airport in Beirut, stopped by a group that called itself the Revolutionary Organization of Muslim Socialists. His Austrian driver was also taken, but later released. Collett had worked for several years as a journalist, in Prague, Czechoslovakia and later in New York, especially at the UN. An reported eyewitness account of his hanging, attributed to ruthless Palestinian leader Abu Nidal, was published in 2005, at which point Collett’s American wife, Elaine, also a UN worker, renewed calls to find the body in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
Links to other sites: CNN, United Nations press release, Times (May 2005)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two Swiss men who were whisked away to a secret location, without outside contact, by the Libyan government in October have been turned over to the Swiss embassy in Tripoli, Libya. The men were kidnapped after being lured away on the pretext of needing medical examinations. The two have been waiting for exit visas to leave the country, and they have been at the centre of a tense political standoff between Bern and Tripoli.
The three-year-old British girl who made headlines for months after her disappearance in May 2007 from the family’s vacation rooms in Praia da Luz, Portugal, Madeleine McCann, is back in the news, with the family saying they have a new lead and private detectives in Australia seeking a woman who is called a Victoria Beckham look-alike, with an Australian or New Zealand accent. BBC TV, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald , Australia
Authorities in Yemen said Monday 15 June that the bodies of some of the nine tourists kidnapped 12 June while they were on a picnic have been found, but reports differ on the number of dead and whether two children who were with them have been spared and are now safe. The group, seven Germans, one British man and a South Korean woman, reportedly all worked at a hospital in the area, in the northwest of the country. AFP/BBC reports that three bodies were found, while TSR (Fre), citing agencies, says that seven bodies were found, including that of one of the children, but that the two other children are safe.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – British tourist Edwin Dyer was reportedly murdered in Mali Sunday 31 May by the North African affiliate of Al Qaeda (AQIM), according to the UK and Swiss governments. A Swiss, Werner Greiner, remains captive, prompting the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) to strongly condemn the action, saying it is “dismayed at the blow dealt by this barbaric act.” It calls for Greiner’s release.
Dyer and several other people were kidnapped 22 January on the Niger-Mali border by nomads who later sold them to Al Qaeda militants.
Budapest, Hungary (TSR, Fre) – Three-year-old Elise André, taken from her father, who was attacked by two men as the father and daughter left her pre-school in France 25 March, has been found with her mother as the pair tried to cross the border from Hungary into Ukraine. The mother has been placed under arrest and the father re-united with his daughter. The couple divorced when the girl was a year old. The news made headlines in Switzerland, with fears that the mother had flown with the girl from Geneva to Russia; as a Russian citizen she could not be extradited even if charged with illegally taking the child out of France.
Geneva, Switzerland and Islambad, Pakistan (GenevaLunch) - The United Nations has re-issued a weekend appeal for help in safely freeing kidnapped John Solecki, noting that it is “is aware of the message conveyed yesterday through the Press Club in Quetta,” without providing details.
