Kidnappers in Nigeria have released a Spanish doctor they abducted three weeks ago, police said on Saturday. Gunmen kidnapped Jose Manuel Machimbarrena on April 4 from his home in southeastern Nigeria, a region where several foreigners have been seized for ransom in the past few years.
“The kidnapped Dr Machimbarrena … was released yesterday,” Enugu police spokesman Ebere Amaraizu said in a statement.
“The state police command has intensified its manhunt in the pursuit of the hoodlums who took him.” Kidnapping is a major criminal enterprise in Africa’s second biggest economy, and most victims are Nigerian.
Scores of foreigners have been abducted in the oil-producing Niger Delta in recent years, though an amnesty for militants in 2009 reduced the number of kidnappings substantially. Most kidnap victims were released after payment of a ransom. Enugu is just north of the oil-producing region.
A Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the freeing of Machimbarrena, who has been living in Nigeria since 1978, adding that he was tired but in good health. It was unclear whether a ransom had been paid.
