Italian hostage in Philippines freed after 6 months

Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:28pm BST
 
Email | Print | | Single Page
[-] Text [+]

MANILA (Reuters) - An Italian Red Cross official held hostage by Muslim rebels in the Philippines for nearly six months was freed Sunday, senior officials said.

Eugenio Vagni, 61, was brought to an army base on the southern island of Jolo by a local politician who had been mediating with the kidnappers, rebels from the Abu Sayyaf group, said Senator Richard Gordon, the head of the Philippine Red Cross.

"He is very weak," Gordon told Reuters, adding that no ransom had been paid for the release of the sanitation engineer.

"I am elated. Finally, his ordeal is over," he said.

Local news Web sites said Vagni was freed after the military agreed to release two wives and children of a senior Abu Sayyaf leader who was reportedly holding Vagni in the rugged interior of Jolo. The women and children were arrested Tuesday, the news reports said.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Vagni had been released by his captors peacefully.

"There was no blitz, no violent action that could have put the hostage's life at risk," Frattini said.

"It ended in the best way," he said in an interview with Italian state television.

Gordon said Vagni was undergoing a medical checkup at the trauma ward of a military hospital on Jolo.  Continued...

 
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling speaks at a Thomson Reuters newsmaker event in London October 21, 2009. REUTERS/Andrew Winning
Darling says stimulus stays

G20 policymakers are agreed that it is too early to pull the plug on economic life-support packages, Chancellor Alistair Darling tells Reuters.  Full Article 

Photo

Most Popular General News on Reuters UK

  • Articles
  • Videos
 A demonstrator pounds away the Berlin Wall as East Berlin border guards look on from above the Brandenburg Gate in this November 11, 1989 file photo. REUTERS/David Brauchli/File Photo
Berlin Wall anniversary

Twenty years after the Berlin Wall's fall, Reuters provides an in-depth, multimedia look at one of the 20th Century's defining moments.   Full Coverage