Somalia
Ransom demand loweredPosted Jan 30 2009
Somali kidnappers holding Alberta journalist Amanda Lindhout, 27, and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan, 35, have reportedly dropped their ransom demand from $2.5 million to $100,000, the head of a Somalia press freedom organization said.
Knight Digital Media Center reports that Dad Abdi Daud, executive director of Mogadishu-based Somali Journalists Rights Agency, said the new ransom demand signaled a positive development in the case. Lindhout and Brennan were kidnapped at gunpoint outside Mogadishu on Aug. 23, 2008.
Daud believes the kidnapping may have been orchestrated with the help of employees at the Mogadishu hotel where Lindhout and Brennan were staying.
The two were kidnapped along with their Somali fixer and driver, while on their way from Mogadishu to visit refugee camps in Afgoye.
The release of Somali journalist Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi last week was a dramatic development in the kidnapping case that has slowly receded into the background as the conflict in Somalia worsens.
Elmi’s father plans to make contact with the kidnappers to pass on medicine for the two Westerners who are being treated relatively well, but suffering from body itching, a Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman said.