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
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl in Colombia three weeks ago outraged the country and when Nohora Valentina Munoz was released near the Venezuelan border Monday evening 17 October, the country’s president gave effusive thanks to the Geneva-based International Red Cross (ICRC), which negotiated the child’s freedom.
She and her mother were kidnapped 29 September, en route to the girl’s school. Her mother, the wife of Jorge Enrique Munoz, mayor of the town of Fortul in Arauca, was released the morning of the kidnapping.
It is not clear who took the pair, nor have any of the conditions for the child’s release been given. The ICRC in Geneva does not release details of such negotiations in which it is involved.
El Tempo (Spa) newspaper, which has covered the case heavily reported earlier that 1,800 police set up several search and rescue operations for the girl but that these were called off at the request of the ICRC, in order to allow negotiations to begin.
© 2011 MSF / Brendan Bannon
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two women, Medecin Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff, were kidnapped at 13:20 Thursday 13 October from the Ifo extension area of the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya. Their driver is undergoing urgent medical treatment after being shot.
Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee camp, with 463,739 Somali refugees, more than 190,000 of whom have fled Somalia this year.
MSF issued the following statement, saying that in the interests of the safe return of the woman, it will not issue further statements:
“Two international staff, both Spanish, were taken. As yet, MSF has not been able to re-establish contact with the two staff taken. A crisis team has been set up to deal with this incident, and the families have been informed.
“‘We strongly condemn this attack,’ says José Antonio Bastos, the president of MSF-Spain. ‘MSF is in contact with all the relevant authorities and is doing all it can to ensure the swift and safe return of our colleagues. Meanwhile, our thoughts are with them and with their families in this difficult time.’”
International agencies expressed their outrage. “These MSF colleagues were working to rescue lives, says UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres. “It is wholly unacceptable that they should be made targets for kidnap. I appeal to those responsible to facilitate their immediate and safe return.”
ICRC, the International Red Cross, has been increasingly vocal about the dangers facing international independent aid workers.
Breaking news: father and two sons found, safe and healthy, on an autoroute south of Milan, Italy
Ed. note: details to follow
Update 16:50 Zug, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The search has intensified for a local businessman and politician, Erich Zimmerman, and his 7- and 10-year-old sons Lorin and Tim from Neuheim, canton Zug. Lake police, the Swiss army and a military Super Puma helicopter equipped with infra-red search gear Tuesday night joined local police in looking for the family.
Zug police sent out a Schengen alert they said Wednesday morning, to extend the search beyond Swiss borders. Police had received 10 tips by late afternoon Tuesday and were following all leads.
The three left home late Monday in a silver Nissan Note, license plate ZG 9598, to run errands. The mother contacted police at 21:00 when they did not return. At this point, say police, all possibilities, from an accident to kidnapping, are being considered.
The father had not shown any suicidal tendencies and there were no marital problems, police say.
This is the second case in 10 days of missing persons that has involved more than one family member. Police in Vaud continue to lead a three-country search for missing six-year-old twins Alessia and Livia Schepp.
Police number if you have information +41 21 644 82 31, or go to the nearest police station
Update 5, 12:00 6 February / Lausanne and Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two six-year-olds, Alessia and Livia, remain missing Saturday morning 5 February, and police are asking the public for any news that might help find them, following their father’s suicide shortly before midnight Thursday 3 February. The girls are perfectly trilingual in French, Italian and Swiss-German, Vaud police told GenevaLunch. The family is Swiss: correction – police now say that although the father was born in Canada he did not hold Canadian citizenship.
Read more…
Sarah Oberson disappeared in 1985 from Saxon, Valais (photo, Sarah Oberson Foundation)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s kidnap alert system, adopted in early 2010, is now available via cell phone networks and the government is asking the public to register online to participate, to ensure the widest possible alert network.
The minutes that follow a kidnapping are crucial, they say, and the quicker the alert is out to as many people as possible, the better.
The system works in four languages: English, French, German and Italian, in Switzerland only. It takes just seconds to register.
The system is based on the widespread success of a similar system in France and elsewhere. A young girl in Fresno, California was saved in October 2010 when a man who had just heard an alert saw a car going by that matched a description and he chased the kidnapper until the man stopped and pushed the girl out of the car.
The Sarah Oberson Foundation was set up in memory of a five-year-old Valais girl who disappeared walking from her parents’ to her grandparents’ house in the village of Saxon in 1985. The foundation’s site provides advice on what to do in case of a suspected or known kidnapping, with useful phone numbers.
Le Nouvelliste, Valais newspaper that has been active in the search for Sarah over the years and the campaign to set up a national alert system, proves more information on how the system works.
A Dutch aid worker and his Afghan driver have been captured by about five armed men in Takhar province and taken in the direction of Kunduz, in Afghanistan’s northeast. The two men, who work for an organization that helps people with disabilities, were captured 26 October.
The Taliban is increasingly targeting aid workers in Afghanistan, 22 of whom have been kidnapped in 2010, of whom 11 have been killed. But common criminals are often also involved.
Links to other sites: AFP, Daily Telegraph, New York Times
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva and Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission launched a major information campaign 13 September in Ciudad Juarez, in the state of Chihuahua, after the two signed an agreement to fight human trafficking and kidnapping in Mexico. Criminal gangs in Mexico have been taking hostages and holding them for US$500-3,000 ransoms, to finance their activities.
Migrant workers heading north to the US have been targets and when their families do not pay the ransoms they are sometimes murdered by the hostage-takers, often in large groups, such as in the recent mass murder of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, along the Mexican Northern Border.
The human rights commission estimates that some 10,000 migrants were victims of kidnapping over a period of six months in 2009, but the figure is widely considered to be higher than that. Most of the kidnapping victims are migrants from Central America, mainly Honduras and Guatemala, according to the IOM.
The information campaign is part of IOM’s regional counter-trafficking project, which is funded by the US State Department Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration. Mexico is the fifth country in the region to launch the regional campaign; the other countries are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Television and radio spots, as well as a radio soap opera, will carry the message to audiences in the northern and southern border cities of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua and Tapachula, Chiapas, cities where IOM has sub-offices and carries out anti trafficking activities.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The driver of a stolen car that crashed in Pregny-Chambesy early Saturday with the kidnapped owner of the car in the trunk had been convicted of rape as a minor, in France, the Tribune de Geneve reports Tuesday, saying that he was also found to have been drinking. He and two other youths accosted a 20-year-old Geneva woman at a stoplight at 05:00 and forced her into the trunk of her car, which they then drove at high speed to Pregny-Chambesy, where the driver hit two parked cars.
The driver and kidnap victim were both hospitalized after the crash and charges were pressed against the three youths, at least one of whom is reportedly finishing his baccalaureate in Ferney-Voltaire.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva police are reminding drivers to routinely lock the doors of their cars, even if the kind of aggression that took place early Saturday in Geneva is very rare. A 20-year-old woman was accosted by three men, ages 18-23, as she drove home at 05:00 Saturday, along the rue Montbrillant. The three, who reside in France and don’t have a police record, forced their way into her car and insisted she drive to a parking lot. When that failed she was hit violently in the face, put in the trunk of her car and the three drove off at a high speed.
The driver lost control of the car around Pregny-Chambesy and hit two parked cars. Police were called and when they arrived one of the young men had escaped, but the two others were at the scene. The driver was taken to hospital, as was the young woman, who had escaped from the trunk into the passsenger section of the car. She, too, was hospitalized. The youth who escaped was caught.
The three were charged on several counts, including kidnapping and intent to harm.
A US senator from Idaho, home to most of the missionaries who were accused of trying to kidnap a group of children in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, says the charges against nine of them have been dropped. A tenth member of the group remains jailed with charges pending. No explanation has been given.
Update 23:10 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Werner Greiner, a lawyer from Zurich, has been released in the north of Mali by the captors who have held him since January, the Swiss Foreign Affairs Department confirmed Sunday. Greiner was part of a group of six tourists taken hostage on a road from Mali to Niger where they were traveling after attending a music festival.
Armed Somalian men released two aid workers, from Doctors without Borders, Tuesday 5 May. The pair had been kidnapped and held for a ransom, but according to local sources a ransom was not paid. Incidents like this have hindered the ability of relief workers to respond to the long-standing Humanitarian crisis in the country, according to an Al Jazeera report.
Former French President Jacques Chirac kept the promise he made to murder victim Ilan Halimi’s parents: 27 gang members who targeted Jews as their victims will go on trial in Paris for killing Halimi. Halimi was kidnapped and tortured for more than three weeks before his captors stabbed him, tied him to a tree and set him on fire three years ago. BBC
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A Swiss mother of a two-year-old child who returned to Zurich on vacation in January 2008, then refused to retun to the US, has been told by the Swiss high court that she must respect the decision of a US court and return the child to the United States.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – John Solecki, head of the UNHCR’s office in Quetta, Pakistan, has now been a hostage for nearly two months and the Geneva-based organization has joined other United Nations organizations to demand the release of Solecki and 18 other UN staff kidnapped and still held, around the world. Solecki is the second UNHCR staff member held in captivity in the past two years, says the organization. Hassan Mohammed Ali, head of UNHCR’s office in Mogadishu, Somalia, was held for two monthsin 2008.
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – The French and Italian-speaking cantons’ police and justice departments Tuesday 24 March called on the Swiss federal government to take the lead in putting in place a kidnapping alert system before the end of 2009.
Elise Andre (photo: Interpol), click on image to view larger
Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Elise, a three-year-old who was kidnapped Friday in Arles, southern France, as she returned from school with her father, is still being sought by Interpol with police in France, Switzerland and Russia. TSR carries a headline, “confusion reigns,” with Russian authorities saying the girl is not, to their knowledge, in Russia, after they were reported by Russian media over the weekend as saying she was there.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) released their last known foreign hostage, Erik Roland Larsson, Tuesday 17 March after nearly two years of captivity. Larsson, 69, appears to have suffered a stroke during the time he spent captive and is being evaluated by doctors in the city of Monteria. Farc sought $5 million for his release, but it is not known if the ransom was paid. Al Jazeera
ICRC, Red Cross activities in Philippines, 2009 (map © ICRC)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Geneva-based ICRC (International Red Cross) confirmed Wednesday that Lady Ann Sahidulla, vice-governor of Sulu Island and chair of the Sulu Red Cross in the Philippines, was able to visit the three Red Cross workers who were kidnapped 15 January while returning from a visit to a prison. The three have been in regular phone contact with the Red Cross and appear to be healthy and calm.
Updated 16 January 11:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Military authorities Friday said they have identified one of the kidnappers of three ICRC workers in the Philippines, a former prison guard at the prison where the three had been working, according to 20 Minutes/ats, Fre.
The Red Cross in the country confirmed, as did the ICRC in Geneva, the kidnapping Thursday in the southern Philippines of three people identified by a military spokesperson, as three ICRC workers: Swiss Andreas Notter, Italian Eugenio Vagni and Filipino Jean Lacaba.BBC
Five German toursts, among the 11 Europeans kidnapped along with their Egyptian guides, in the desert in Egypt, arrived home Wednesday. They were taken hostage by a group that appears to belong to the Sudanese Liberation Movement, a group fighting the Sudanese government. CNN
