KENYA: The landlord of an elderly disabled French woman abducted by an armed gang speaks of the violent ordeal on the Kenyan coast

Record ID: 361800

  • Title: KENYA: The landlord of an elderly disabled French woman abducted by an armed gang speaks of the violent ordeal on the Kenyan coast
  • Date: 2nd October 2011
  • Summary: LAMU KENYA (OCTOBER 01, 2011) (REUTERS) VIEW FROM KENYAN HOTEL (SOUNDBITE) (English) LANDLORD OF ABDUCTED FRENCH WOMAN, ABDALLAH FADHIL, SAYING "I came out of my balcony and then found guys talking. I asked them and they said 'oh, something very serious has happened - your friend Maria has been kidnapped yesterday night.' I was really shocked I could not hold my breath
  • Embargoed: 17th October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Reuters ID: LVA4BV1HGCDCGZMA0O2H7LZ9RPE6
  • Story Text: Kidnappers escaped into Somalia with an elderly French hostage on Saturday (October 1) after a gun battle with Kenyan security forces.
    The 66-year-old disabled woman was grabbed in the early hours of Saturday from a private house on the island of Manda on Kenya's northern coast.
    The victim's Kenyan boyfriend, John Lepapa, said six masked men brandishing assault rifles had stormed their beach house. The wheelchair-bound woman was then carried to a waiting boat in the second abduction of a foreign visitor in three weeks.
    Her landlord Abdallah Fadhil said he had not been present during the kidnap, but his staff had pleaded with the gunmen.
    "From the workers there we heard she was really shocked and crying, she could not say anything. The workers only told the kidnappers that she is sick she cannot move... I don't know whether they understood Swahili or not," he said.
    Earlier, Kenyan coastguards surrounded the kidnappers near the border with Somalia and the bandits fired into the air in an attempt to scare off the two boats and a circling aircraft.
    Analysts and diplomats in the region had warned that Somali pirates were likely to turn to softer targets, such as tourists in Kenya, in response to much more robust defence of merchant vessels by private security guards.
    Lepapa, 39, and a close associate of the couple said the hostage had been battling cancer and was without her medication.
    Lepapa and his partner had returned to the island in the Lamu archipelago two days earlier from France, where they spend part of each year, he told Reuters. The raid appeared well planned, he said.
    Manda island is one of the pearls of the east African country's tourism sector where visitors snorkel and bask in the sun and dhows meander lazily down the Indian Ocean.
    France advised on Saturday against all travel to the archipelago's palm-fringed islands and warned against sailing along Kenya's coast due to the high risk of pirates.
    In early September, gunmen attacked British tourists at a camp resort a short speedboat ride away from Lamu, killing a man and kidnapping his wife.
    Somali pirates said she was being held in Somalia. The al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab militant group controls large chunks of the lawless country's south and central regions.
    The attacks risk harming Kenyan tourism which had been recovering from post-election violence and the global financial crisis.
    Before Saturday's kidnapping, France had eight nationals held captive overseas, among them three aid workers in Yemen, four citizens in the Sahel region and one other in Somalia.
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