Kiwi nurse caught by IS six years ago
A NEW Zealand nurse has been a captive of Islamic State in Syria for almost six years – an ordeal that has long been kept secret for fear her life is at risk.
A voluntary media blackout was lifted after her employer, the International Committee of the Red Cross, decided it might elicit new information on her whereabouts following IS’s collapse in Syria.
It says recent eyewitness reports suggest Louisa Akavi, now 62, might be alive.
On Sunday The New York Times became the first media group to name Ms Akavi, who was taken captive with two Syrian drivers in 2013 in the northwestern city of Idlib.
The Times reported that as recently as December, Ms Akavi may have been seen by two people at a clinic in Sousa, one of IS’s last outposts. Sightings in 2016 and 2017 were also reported, the Red Cross said.
“We continue to work together (with the Red Cross) to locate and recover her,” NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters said. “This has been a uniquely complex and difficult case. Louisa went to Syria with the ICRC to deliver humanitarian relief to people suffering as a result of a brutal civil war.”
It is believed she was offered for ransom and may have been used as a human shield; at one point it was thought she might have died. But there are hopes her medical skills might have caused her to be spared.
Negotiations in 2013 and 2014 were not successful. In 2014 she was among hostages moved by IS only hours before a raid by US special forces aiming to free them.
Dominik Stillhart, director of operations for the ICRC, said the organisation had decided to permit publication in the hope it would lead to her recovery.
“We have not spoken publicly before today because from the moment Louisa and the others were kidnapped, every decision we made was to maximise the chances of winning their freedom,” Mr Stillhart said in a statement.
“With Islamic State group having lost the last of its territory, we felt it was now time to speak out.”
Ms Akavi is of Cook Islands descent and had lived in Otaki, a small town north of Wellington. She is the longest-held captive in the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross.