news Family and colleagues of kidnapped Cdn aid worker relieved by release

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Family and colleagues of kidnapped Cdn aid worker relieved by release



Thu Apr 30, 5:45 PM





By Tobi Cohen, The Canadian Press


MONTREAL - A young Canadian aid worker freed after three weeks in captivity in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan has spoken with her family in Quebec and reported she is safe and preparing to return home, her father said Thursday.

Denis Jodoin offered little comment about his daughter Stephanie's ordeal but said he's spoken with her directly and that the family is "very happy" she is doing well.

He said his daughter is expected to make a stop in Paris before returning home to Mont-Saint-Hilaire, near Montreal, and she will decide then if she wants to speak publicly about her ordeal.

"All we are confirming is she's been freed, we've spoken to her, we're very happy, but we don't want to go much further than that," Jodoin said in a telephone interview.

"Certainly, as you can imagine, it's a big relief, a big joy for us, her family."

Stephanie Jodoin and a French colleague, Claire Dubois, were kidnapped by gunmen inside their compound in the south Darfur settlement of al-Fursan Ed on April 4.

The two were working for Aide medicale internationale, a French humanitarian aid group.

Spokesman Frederic Mar said Jodoin had been working as a program co-ordinator in Sudan for just a few months when she was kidnapped.

Dubois was responsible for the group's medical programs.

"It's a big relief for us now," said Mar, noting both are in good health despite the trying experience.

"Right now we're working on organizing their return and their reunion with their families."

Aide medicale internationale was not among the 13 foreign aid groups expelled by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir after an international court issued a warrant for his arrest on March 4.

The International Criminal Court accuses al-Bashir of orchestrating atrocities against Darfur's ethnic African population in the region's six-year separatist war.

Mar said the group nonetheless suspended its operations in south Darfur after the abduction - a situation that remains in effect.

France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, expressed thanks to those who helped free the workers but neither he nor the aid group would elaborate on the release.

"We have handled the case wisely and averted the use of force for the safety of the hostages," the Sudanese state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Ahmed Karti, told reporters in Khartoum.

Karti was speaking at Al Amal military hospital, where the two women were taken for medical checkups after landing at the Khartoum airport Thursday. They were then formally handed over to a French envoy and a Canadian government representative, Karti said.

The aid workers were then to fly to France.

Sudanese state television showed the minister, standing next to the two freed hostages, saying: "We wish the end of this problem will mark the start of a new page in relations between France and Sudan."

The freed hostages didn't speak.

The semi-official Sudan Media Centre said 13 kidnappers travelling in two vehicles and on a camel seized the hostages and took them to an area about 100 kilometres east of the town of al-Genaina in west Darfur.

The group has reportedly called itself the Freedom Eagles of Africa.

The Sudan Media Centre said no ransom was paid to free them and that a tribal chief mediated the release.

The reason the two were seized is unclear, but the Sudan Media Centre, quoting an unnamed security official, said it was linked to resentment in Darfur over the 2007 kidnapping by a French aid group of about 100 children in the region.

Six members of the group, Zoe's Ark, were arrested in Chad as they sought to take the children on an airplane to France to be adopted.

Zoe's Ark said the children were orphans from Darfur, but they were found to be from neighbouring Chad and most had a living parent or close adult relative. The incident strained relations between France and Chad.

In an interview via satellite phone with Agence France-Presse a few weeks ago, Jodoin indicated she was being well-treated but that she didn't know where she was being held.

She also confirmed comments from the kidnappers that her colleague was ill.

This was the second recent kidnapping of a Canadian aid worker in Darfur .

Laura Archer, a nurse from Montreal with the group Doctors Without Borders, was abducted by gunmen on March 11. She and two colleagues from Italy and France were released three days later. Their abduction was attributed to retaliation for the arrest warrant against al-Bashir.

- With files from the Associated Press