New Calls To Free South African Hostage Held In Mali

Johannesburg, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Mar, 2023 ) :The family of a South African held hostage by jihadists in Mali for over five years launched a fresh appeal for his release Saturday, just days after a French journalist was freed.

Gerco van Deventer, 47, was kidnapped in Libya on November 3, 2017 on his way to a power plant construction site around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of the capital Tripoli.

Three other Turkish engineers also seized at the same time as him were freed seven months later. Van Deventer remained in captivity and was moved to Mali.

"I'm launching a fresh appeal... we desperately need him home, he's a father of three children," his wife Shereen van Deventer, told AFP in an online interview.

"It's a difficult situation for us as a family, we would really ask for ... their (captors) compassion to release him," she said speaking from the small town of Swellendam, 220 kilometres east of Cape Town.

Van Deventer, an emergency paramedic who was working for a security company, is the only South African citizen held hostage by a non-state actor in the Sahel, according to the wife.

The new calls for his release came after the freeing of French freelance journalist Olivier Dubois, 48, and 61-year-old American aid worker Jeffery Woodke -- respectively kidnapped in 2021 and 2016.