Sunday, August 23, 2009

Canadian journalist's year in hell,

As anniversaries go, it's a bleak one – and only Amanda Lindhout herself truly knows how bleak.
It was one year ago today that the Alberta-bred journalist and two colleagues were kidnapped at gunpoint in Somalia, plucked from a road near Mogadishu.
Since then, little has been seen or heard of the 28-year-old Sylvan Lake native, aside from a mute video of her and Australian reporter Nigel Brennan kneeling before their masked and armed captors aired on Al-Jazeera television weeks after they disappeared, and a few scattered, horrifying calls to media outlets by a distraught woman claiming to be Amanda Lindhout in recent months in which she essentially pleads with the Canadian government to save her life.
The last was made to Omni TV three weeks ago: "I don't want to die here and I'm afraid I'll die in captivity if I don't get help soon," she sobbed, saying she was kept in shackles in a windowless room and suffering from fever, dysentery and an abscessed tooth. "I don't know how much longer I can bear this."
Just days before, the Somali news site Waagacusub.com furthered long-circulating rumours of rape by reporting that Lindhout had given birth to a baby boy and was "very contented with her marriage relationship with one of her captors." ..more..http://www.thestar.com/article/685279

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