Hostage Johan Gustafsson, held by al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011, has been freed, the Swedish government says.<\/p>\n
Mr Gustafsson, 42, is being flown back to Sweden from Africa, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstr\u00f6m said in a statement on Monday.<\/p>\n
He was seized by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) along with two other men, one of whom was freed in a dawn raid in 2015.<\/p>\n
Ms Wallstr\u00f6m said Mr Gustafsson was “in good spirits”, local media report.<\/p>\n
“It is with great pleasure that I can announce that Johan Gustafsson has been released,” Ms Wallstr\u00f6m added.
\nShe said that the Swede’s release was thanks to “extensive efforts” and co-operation between the Swedish foreign ministry, police and “foreign authorities”.<\/p>\n
Ms Wallstr\u00f6m said she had spoken with Mr Gustafsson, who she described as being “happy” and “overwhelmed” by Monday’s events.<\/p>\n
“I can not say more at the current time,” she added.<\/p>\n
Sweden’s former Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said that Mr Gustafsson’s kidnapping weighed heavily on his mind during his time in the role, which ended in 2014.<\/p>\n
He tweeted on Monday: “Extremely gratifying that Johan Gustafsson is free. No single case concerned me more as foreign minister.”<\/p>\n
Mr Gustafsson was kidnapped along with South African Stephen Malcolm and Dutchman Sjaak Rijke.<\/p>\n
Mr Rijke was freed by French special forces in April 2015 after he was discovered by chance in a dawn raid in northern Mali.<\/p>\n
AQIM took a number of Western hostages before the French military deployed its forces in January 2013.<\/p>\n
In a separate incident in December 2014, French hostage Serge Lazarevic was freed after a prisoner swap.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hostage Johan Gustafsson, held by al-Qaeda in Mali since 2011, has been freed, the Swedish government says. Mr Gustafsson, 42, is being flown back to Sweden from Africa, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstr\u00f6m said in a statement on Monday. He was seized by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) along with two other men, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[8637,8638,8639],"class_list":["post-331653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-al-qaeda","tag-hostage","tag-hostage-johan-gustafsson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}