LONDON – The brothers of a British man who was freed after being held hostage for seven months by Nigerian militants, yesterday spoke of their joy at his sudden release.
Oil worker Robin Barry Hughes, 59, was among a group of 27 people kidnapped off a boat in Nigeria in September last year.
Hughes, who comes from St Margaret’s Bay near Dover in Kent, was released by militants from Nigeria’s main armed group, MEND, on Sunday on grounds of his age and his ill health.
A second British hostage, 34-year-old Matthew Macguire from Merseyside, is still being held by the group.
Hughes lives with his wife and 16-year-old daughter in Brazil and they were delighted at the news, his brother said.
A security source in the Nigerian oil hub of Port Harcourt told AFP Hughes was receiving medical attention in hospital but was ‘in a stable condition’.
Kidnappings are commonplace in southern Nigeria’s oil region, with hundreds of people – many but not all connected to the oil industry – seized in the past three years alone.
– Nampa-AFP
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