By DPA
Madrid/Mogadishu : No ransom was paid for two Doctors Without Frontiers or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid workers who were released Wednesday after being kidnapped in Somalia a week ago, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and Somali officials said.
“We have not needed to pay” for the release of Spanish physician Mercedes Garcia, 51, and Argentine nurse Pilar Bauza, 26, Moratinos said in the southern Spanish city of Cordoba.
The kidnappers were seeking to raise their social and political profile and to demonstrate their “capacity of mobilization” within the Somali internal context, Moratinos explained.
Earlier reports had said that the abductors had asked for 250,000 dollars for the two women, who were manhandled at gunpoint out of their car in Bosasso, in the Puntland region of the Horn of African nation.
Somali officials said clan elders held long negotiations with the kidnappers, but said no ransom was paid.
“Some of the clan elders and former politicians of Puntland tried and won their release without any ransom payment,” said Yusuf Ahmed Jama, chief of Action Against Human Trafficking, an organization that negotiated with the kidnappers.
After their release, Garcia and Bauza were staying at a hotel in Bossaso, where the Spanish ambassador to Kenya was with them, Spanish media reported.
The aid workers, who were reported in good health, were expected to fly to Spain on Thursday.
Sources of the Argentine Foreign Ministry confirmed the release of the MSF staff members. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana reportedly spoke to Bauza over the phone.
Paula Farias, president of the Spanish branch of MSF, expressed “indignation” over the kidnapping which jeopardized “humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable population groups.”
“Somalia suffers from an oblivion which only increases the suffering of the Somalis,” Farias said in a communiqué.
Most of the kidnappers reportedly belonged to the Warsangeli sub-clan of the Harti clan, which the local authorities have accused of trying to make profits with abductions.
A French cameraman was released in December after being kidnapped in the same region as the MSF staff members. The Somali authorities denied that a ransom was paid for him.
MSF evacuated its international staff from the area.
Somalia has lacked a functioning government since 1991 after the toppling of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. Violence in recent months has displaced around 1 million people and has caused some 3 million to flee the country as refugees, according to United Nations figures.
Puntland has been slightly more stable but the past few months have seen a rise in abductions and attacks on foreigners.