Monday, October 03, 2011
A gang of 10 armed kidnappers seized Ms Marie Dedieu, 66, early Saturday from her home on Manda Island in the Lamu archipelago and are reported to have taken her to Somalia.
The kidnapping is the second in the area in less than one month. A British tourist, Judith Tebbutt, was seized on September 11 to the north of Lamu by an armed gang who killed her husband.
The security forces had insisted that the first attack was an isolated incident.
“The man we have in custody was working at the woman’s home and he is assisting us with the investigation,” said a police source who asked not to be identified.
“There are aspects we want him to clarify to us because he is crucial in this investigation,” the officer added.
Ms Dedieu, who needs a wheelchair to move around and who is on several types of medication, was taken to war-torn Somalia by her captors, Stephen Ikua, the district commissioner for Lamu told AFP.
“It must have been Al-Shabaab,” he said, referring to the Somali insurgent group that is battling the Western-backed Somali government.
Mediators have been sent to secure her release but officials have warned the talks could be lengthy.
Ms Dedieu has lived for the past 15 years in the Lamu archipelago, off Kenya’s northern coast.
Ms Didieu’s companion, John Lepapa, a 39-year-old Kenyan who was present during the attack and who said he was shot at, said there were six assailants on land and four waiting in a boat, and all had guns.
Tourists pack
Kenya said its forces gave chase, dispatching a helicopter and coastguard vessels to catch the kidnappers as they made their way by speedboat to Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia but failing to apprehend them in time.
The majority of tourists on Manda packed their bags and left immediately.
Abdul Alim, a close friend of Dedieu’s who works on Lamu, said Dedieu’s staff told him the kidnappers had dragged their employer over sand and stones and then “dumped her in the boat like a sack.”