Kidnapped woman has fallen sick, says pirate

A British woman held in Somalia after being abducted from a Kenyan beach resort where her husband was shot dead is suffering from stress and is down with fever, a pirate leader said on Tuesday.

“I was told the hostage is stressed and very sick with fever,” Abdi Yare, who said he had spoken to the kidnappers from his pirate lair of Hobyo, told AFP.

Mrs Judith Tebbutt, who is reported to have hearing difficulties, was seized early on September 11 from a remote beach resort near the Kenya-Somalia border by armed men who shot dead her husband. (READ: Seized Briton ‘seen’ on Somalia island)

Asked for phone

“She also has problems communicating with the kidnappers. She asked for a phone to contact her son and her brother back home,” Yare added.

On Sunday, elders in Amara, a village north of the pirate hub of Harardhere, said Mrs Tebbutt had been transferred there from a boat by her captors.

Mrs Tebbutt’s abductors have been on the run. “They are said to be running away from al Shabaab, who according to our sailors, had launched a manhunt for the group,” said Mr Andrew Mwangura, the coordinator of East African Seafarers Assistance Programme.

Lamu West district commissioner Stephen Ikua said that clan elders in Kenya and Somalia had been assisting in the rescue of Mrs Tebbutt.