KENYA: Leisure resort owner says relieved by Judith Tebbutt release

Record ID: 362243

  • Title: KENYA: Leisure resort owner says relieved by Judith Tebbutt release
  • Date: 22nd March 2012
  • Summary: LAMU, KENYA (MARCH21, 2012) (REUTERS) GEORGE MOORHEAD WALKING PAST CAMERA LAMU SEAFRONT (SOUNDBITE) (English) KIWAYU SAFARI VILLAGE OWNER, GEORGE MOORHEAD, SAYING: "Well I feel greatly relieved that Judith who was being held against her will for over six months is back being reunited with her son, but I can say at the same time very sad that her husband isnt with her."
  • Embargoed: 6th April 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Travel / Tourism
  • Reuters ID: LVAAE0EK7XKO13RCCSX026UXWQD2
  • Story Text: Somali pirates freed British hostage Judith Tebbutt on Wednesday after a ransom was paid, more than six months since gunmen killed her husband and kidnapped her from a beach resort in neighbouring Kenya.
    Tebbutt's kidnapping and the subsequent abductions of foreigners prompted Kenya to send hundreds of troops into Somalia in October in an attempt to crush the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants, whom Nairobi blamed for the attacks.
    Gunmen raided the remote Kiwayu Safari Village north of the Kenyan coastal town of Lamu in the early hours of Sept. 11, shooting dead publishing executive David Tebbutt, 58, and escaping by speedboat with his wife to nearby Somalia.
    George Moorhead, owner of the now-closed resort which boasted luxury bungalows overlooking the Indian Ocean, told Reuters he was relieved Tebbutt would be reunited with her son but also sad at the loss of her husband.
    "Well I feel greatly relieved that Judith who was being held against her will for over six months is back being reunited with her son, but I can say at the same time very sad that her husband isnt with her." said Moorhead.
    Moorhead said he shared drinks with the couple the night they arrived at the resort -- the eve of the attack -- and described them as being in good spirits as they chatted about their son and the safari they had been on.
    "I spoke to them on their first night which is when the unfortunate event happened and we had drinks and chatted and they were in very good spirits and talking about their son and as one does socially about family and things, about their safari in Africa and so it was all a sudden abrupt chain of events afterwards and everything was shattered, their lives and everything." said Moorhead.
    In the weeks after Tebbutt's kidnapping, attackers abducted a disabled French woman from Lamu and two Spanish aid workers from a refugee camp in the east African country.
    Blaming Somali insurgents, Kenya deployed its forces across the border, scrambling to beef up security along the porous frontier and reassure a spooked tourism sector.
    Al Shabaab denied they were behind the seizures and pirates, who usually focus on hijacking merchant ships and yachts off the lawless country's coast, said they were holding Tebbutt.
    Somalia has been mired in turmoil since warlords toppled dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Somali government forces, Kenyan, Ethiopian and African Union troops from Uganda and Burundi are all battling the al Qaeda allied militants.
    On Wednesday the militants said they detonated a car bomb in the heart of Mogadishu, wounding five people, and police said they were investigating a second suspicious vehicle in the city.
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