Somali security forces have rescued a South African couple kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean and
Bruno Pelizzari and Debbie Calitz at the presidential palace in Mogadishu yesterday following their rescue
held for 18 months, Defence Minister Hussein Arab Isse said yesterday. “The rescue started last night and lasted until this morning and you can see that the pair were freed safely,” Isse told a joint press conference with the couple, Debbie Calitz and Bruno Pelizzari. Isse said the couple had been freed from “Al Qaeda-affiliated” insurgents. Calitz and Pelizzari were sailing in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya in 2010 when their yacht was hijacked by 12 pirates who set course for Somalia and took the couple ashore at Baraawe.