Kidnapped Canadian Amanda Lindhout says she pities ‘deeply wounded’ HABAR-GIDR HAWIYE captors

 

Canadian freelance reporter Amanda Lindhout is seen at her home in this family handout photo released to the media Dec. 17, 2009. Lindhout was released in HAWIYE  on Nov. 25, 2009, after 15 months in captivity.

Photograph by: Handout, Lindhout family

CALGARY — A Canadian freelance journalist who was kidnapped and beaten in Somalia says she bears no grudge against the war-torn country.
Amanda Lindhout spoke publicly Sunday for the first time since she was freed on Nov. 25, telling a Calgary audience that her “thoughts and prayers remain with those who continue to suffer in Somalia.”
“It’s very important for me to say I do not see the men who kidnapped me as a reflection of Somali society as a whole,” she told Alberta’s Somali-Canadian community Sunday.
Lindhout, who cried while watching a slide show of photos of the war-ravaged country at the event in her honour, described her captors as “deeply wounded.”
“Despite my own suffering in Somalia and without condoning what was done to me, I feel that those inflicting the violence, while certainly not innocent, are deeply wounded and war traumatized individuals,” she said...more..