By Oyintari Ben
According to the German aid organization Help, a German relief worker who had been kidnapped in Niger for more than four and a half years has been freed.
The organization did not specify how or where Jorg Lange, a 63-year-old engineer, was released in a statement on Saturday.
In the borderlands where rebel groups, some with ties to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS), have long engaged in frequent attacks and kidnappings, armed men riding motorbikes abducted Lange in April 2018.
The managing director of the company, Bianca Kaltschmitt, said, “We are very pleased and relieved that our colleague Jorg Lange can return to his family after more than four and a half years.”
Additionally, Kaltschmit praised “agencies and friends in Mali, Niger and neighbouring countries,” in addition to the German Foreign Office and other German authorities.
Lange, an engineer by training, had spent more than 30 years working in the humanitarian industry before he was abducted.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project estimates that since 2015, at least 25 foreigners and an unknown number of locals have been kidnapped in the Sahel region.
According to the organization, five foreigners are being held hostage, including Reverend Hans-Joachim Lohre, a German clergyman who was abducted in November in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
The French journalist Olivier Dubois, who was taken last April from northern Mali, the American Jeffery Woodke, the Australian doctor Ken Elliott, and the Romanian Iulian Ghergut, who was taken from a mine in Burkina Faso and has been held since 2015, are among others who are currently being held.
