By Houda Mzioudet.
Tunis, 23 January 2015:
The two Tunisian journalists kidnapped in Libya in September and whom Daesh claimed they had . . .[restrict]executed earlier this month are alive and could be release soon according to the Tunisian Ambassador to Libya.
Ridha Boukadi told the Turkish news agency Anadolu on 20 January that the two Tunisian journalists, Sofiane Chourabi and Nadhir Gtari, may be released soon “on the condition that negotiations are speeded up and their case is dealt with in depth and with diplomatic astuteness”.
“The journalists’ release is inevitable,” he said, however adding that “the situation in Libya is becoming increasingly complicated, which threatens the two journalists’ lives more than ever.”
He indicated that a number of Libya figures were involved in negotiations to free the two. “Diplomatic efforts to release the kidnapped journalists have expanded the scope of negotiations to include other parties which are more active on the ground and which might have a decisive role in solving the crisis,” he was quoted by the agency saying.
He has also said that he himself had played an important role in the release of Tunisian diplomats, Ben Cheikh and Aroussi Gontassi, who were abducted in April last year and released two months later. “It was thanks to the role played by former Libyan Interior Minister Mohamed Sheikh, the Libyan Revolutionaries Opertions Room and Abdulhakim Belhaj”, he claimed.
[/restrict]
