Humanitarian aid organisation Gift of the Givers says negotiations are ongoing to secure the release of South African, Gerco van Deventer, who is being held hostage by Al Qaeda in Mali.
Van Deventer, from Swellendam, was a paramedic in Libya when he was kidnapped in 2017 and subsequently sold to Al Qaeda.
Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman says their negotiator indicated that the captors are willing to talk.
“I know there’s only one obstacle in this whole thing, the part that we need to bypass. That obstacle is the fact that they paid for Gerco from a Libyan group. If they didn’t pay for him, if they just captured him directly, then there’s no cash outlet, but this is the part that’s going to be difficult to deal with. In the group, quite a few of them have said wave that, let him go, because we emphasized to them to say that it’s 5 years and six months and you still won’t get any money.”
Calls for the release of Gerco van Deventer held hostage in Mali:
