Free at last

A spokesperson for Amanda Lindhout’s family has confirmed that the Red Deer-area freelance journalist has been released by the men who held her captive for 15 months in Somalia. The spokesperson needn’t have bothered. Lindhout, 28, gave a number of interviews earlier today from her hotel room in Mogadishu, describing how she’d been beaten by her captives, kept in a small windowless room, and how she had imagined running through Vancouver’s Stanley Park to keep sane. She was released earlier today along with Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan. The pair had been held captive for almost a year and a half. Lindhout said she believed a ransom had been paid in exchange for their release. "We have now brought both foreign journalists to the Sahafi hotel. We have been working for eight days on their release, but finally succeeded,” Somalia MP Ahmed Diiriye told Reuters. “I don’t want to comment on how we released them now.”CTV

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