By BARBARA JONES
British aid money sent to Somalia by Gordon Brown was used to pay a ransom to the pirates who kidnapped Paul and Rachel Chandler, it was claimed yesterday.
Dr Abdi Hangul, who played a crucial role in negotiations to free the middle-aged couple, said a £5.8 million aid package was plundered to provide the final £187,500 demanded by the pirates.
The aid money had been promised personally in March last year by then Prime Minister Brown to President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Ordeal: Paul and Rachel Chandler after 13-months in captivity at the hands of a Somali pirate gang, but it is claimed their ransom was paid from aid
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday in Nairobi, Dr Hangul, chief surgeon at Medina Hospital in Mogadishu, gave details of meetings he held with pirate leaders and with members of Somalia’s government.
The Chandlers, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, were kidnapped and held for a year by Somali pirates while sailing in the Indian Ocean in October 2009.
More...
'Our family hell': Couple tell how their homeless son became a 'slave' to criminal traveller gang
Dr Hangul said: ‘I met senior TFG officials many times to get them to persuade the President to end Paul and Rachel’s ordeal. When they finally came up with the money for the ransom one of the officials told me they had used the British funds.’
Days after the Chandlers arrived home last November, questions were asked of Britain’s Foreign Office and the Department for International Development about ransom payments, said to be £500,000.
Drama: The couple were aboard the yacht Lynn Rival, pictured, when they were taken captive and the British navy then found the empty boat
Spokesmen denied that Gordon Brown’s aid package contributed to the ransom, and said that the funds were earmarked to promote peace and stability in the troubled region.
Yesterday the Foreign Office repeated the denial. A spokesman said: ‘No part of the UK aid budget was used to help secure the Chandlers’ release, nor to benefit pirates. The British Government does not pay ransoms to hostage-takers.
The UK channels all our aid through UN agencies, other bilateral donors, NGOs and managing agents. None of it goes through the Somali Government.’
Dr Hangul suggested that there may be help for Briton Judith Tebbutt, 56, who last week was kidnapped from a luxury resort in Kenya near the Somali border. He speculated that any ransom demand for her freedom could be met by the British Government.
‘They say they never do deals with kidnappers but I am certain that is not true,’ he said.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038717/Somalia-kidnap-Paul-Rachel-Chandler-ransom-money-paid-British-aid.html#ixzz1YLIrb3W2
No comments:
Post a Comment