Ransom paid, British woman held by Somali pirates heads home
NAIROBI – Somali pirates freed British hostage Judith Tebbutt on Wednesday, saying a ransom had been paid, more than six months after gunmen killed her husband and snatched her from a luxury beach resort in Kenya.
Tebbutt’s kidnapping and the subsequent abductions of other foreigners prompted Kenya to send hundreds of troops into Somalia in October to try to crush the al-qaida-linked al-shabaab militants that Nairobi blamed for the attacks.
TV footage showed Tebbutt, who is in her 50s, wearing a green head scarf and running toward a plane in a flat, barren landscape in Adado, Somalia. A man in a bush hat and safari jacket was seen accompanying her.
A pirate, who identified himself as Ahmed, told Reuters a ransom had been dropped by air, although it was not clear who had made the payment.
He said $800,000 had been received and another $140,000 went to brokers and handlers.
In a statement from Nairobi, Tebbutt said she looked forward to returning home to her family and friends.
“I am of course hugely relieved to at last be free, and overjoyed to be reunited with my son, Ollie,” she said.
“This however is a time when my joy at being safe again is overwhelmed by my immense grief, shared by Ollie and the wider family, following David’s passing in September last year. My family and I now need to grieve properly.”
The Somali government said it would assist in anyway it could to capture and arrest the kidnappers.
Tebbutt told ITV news she had not been mistreated, but had endured “some very hard psychological moments.”
She said she had been moved from house to house, especially after elite U.S. Navy SEALS launched a rescue operation in January to free two aid workers who had been kidnapped in October from the semi-autonomous Galmudug region.
The British government said it was not involved in any ransom payment.
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.
Tebbutt later told BBC radio she had not known immediately that her husband had died.
“I didn’t know he’d died until about two weeks from my capture. I just assumed he was alive, but then my son told me he’d died. That was difficult.”
Speaking about her son, she said: “He’s been absolutely fantastic. I don’t know how he secured my release, but he did and I’m really happy.”