There was great joy and relief in Switzerland this evening as news came through that Swiss national Werner Greiner, who had been held hostage by an al-Qaeda group in Mali since January, had been freed.
It was on January 22 this year that Mr Greiner and his wife Gabriella Barco Greiner were seized by a group known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) whilst they were on vacation in Niger, in an area close to its border with Mali. Also seized with the Greiners were a German woman Marianne Petzold and an English man Edwin Dyer.
Whilst Mrs Greiner and Ms Petzold were freed by their captors back on April 22, along with two Canadian diplomats who had been taken hostage in December 2008, AQIM confirmed early in June that they had killed Mr Dyer because the British government had failed to accede to their demands for the release of the Muslim cleric Abu Qatada from a British prison.
Mr Greiner was freed following fighting in the north of Mali between his hostage takers and the Malian Army. In confirming his release Swiss authorities did not refer to Mr Greiner by name. But the statement they issued, as reported by the
BBC, could leave no doubt that it was him who they were referring to:
The Swiss Foreign Ministry learnt with joy that the efforts towards the liberation of the last Swiss hostage in Mali have been successful
The
BBC said that it was unclear at this stage whether Mr Greiner's release had involved the payment of any kind of ransom.
In another report by the
Telegraph newspaper, mention is made of the thanks given to the Malian authorities by their Swiss counterparts, for the care shown to their citizen. Sources in Mali, a country in Western Africa populated by some 12 million people, also spoke about the freeing of Mr Greiner:
The Swiss hostage has been freed, he is very tired, and will soon be reunited with his family, after first passing through Bamako
