Tearful journalist tells of abduction in Somalia
OTTAWA— An emotional Amanda Lindhout recounted the horrors of being kidnapped at gunpoint in Somalia as the trial of one of her alleged hostage-takers got underway.
Lindhout sobbed Thursday upon approaching the witness box to describe her abduction by a gang of armed, masked men nine years ago, the beginning of what she called 460 days of hell.
Lindhout, a freelance journalist from Red Deer, Alta., and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were seized near Mogadishu in August 2008 while working on a story. Both were released in November 2009 in exchange for a ransom payment.
Ali Omar Ader, a 40-year-old Somalian national, has pleaded not guilty to a criminal charge of hostagetaking for his alleged role as a negotiator. He was arrested by the RCMP in Ottawa in June 2015.
It emerged during pretrial motions last spring that the Mounties had lured Ader to Canada through an elaborate scheme to sign a purported book-publishing deal.
The Crown says Ader admitted to undercover investigators on two occasions that he was the negotiator in the kidnapping and that he was paid $10,000.
The Crown alleges Ader was known to the hostages as “Adam” and took part in several telephone calls with Lindhout’s mother to demand payment for her daughter’s release.
He said Allah had put it into his heart to ask for a ransom for the two journalists, Lindhout told the court.