AFP/Ndjamena
The kidnappers of a French Red Cross worker in east Chad have demanded 1mn euros to free him, a source close to the international peacekeeping force in the region said yesterday.
“The hostage on Thursday telephoned his superiors in Ndjamena to tell them that people are asking for 1mn euros ($1.5mn) to free him, without giving any more details,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
Several armed men on Monday night seized Laurent Maurice, an agronomist who was in east Chad to assess recent harvests, in the village of Kawa, about 10km from the border with Sudan.
General Oki Dagache, who heads the co-ordination team with the international force in eastern Chad, has blamed the kidnapping on “crooks from Sudan” and said the kidnappers crossed the border back into Sudan’s western Darfur region.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called for the “rapid and unconditional release of its kidnapped staff member” and said on Tuesday it had suspended its activities in eastern Chad.
The French foreign ministry has requested Maurice’s “release as soon as possible” and said it did not have many details but was “in the process of trying to collect information”.
Besides supporting a health centre in the village of Kawa, the ICRC runs other programmes in eastern Chad, including offering aid to those displaced by internal conflict, as well as visiting detainees in prisons.
Aid agencies have reported several attacks in the region in the past year.
Yesterday, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that six aid agencies had temporarily suspended operations and that 37,000 people would be deprived of relief as a result.
“In two weeks one humanitarian worker has been killed and one kidnapped,” said OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs.
“Six humanitarian organisations have had to temporarily suspend their operations in eastern Chad,” she said.
Before Maurice was kidnapped, another aid worker, a Chadian working for the agency SOLIDARITES, was also killed in the area close to Sudan recently, said Byrs.
Dagache has urged aid agencies to “co-ordinate their movements with the Conafit”, his liaison team with the international mission in Chad, and to inform the “commander of operations of the integrated security detachment”, both based in Abeche, Chad’s main eastern town.
“Any organisation that does not conform to this imperative need for co-ordination and information could see its activities in these zones (eastern Chad) called into question,” the general warned. “Non-respect of this procedure, apart from entailing serious risks for the life of your staff, could also, in the case of a serious incident, do damage to the image of Chad.”
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