Kidnapped Polish photographer escape from captors

Kidnapped Polish photographer escape
from captors
on october 31, 2013 at 4:32 pm in news
WARSAW (AFP) – A Polish photojournalist
kidnapped in Syria in July is safely back home after
escaping his captors, Poland’s foreign ministry said
Thursday.
Polish officials did not reveal how Marcin Suder was
able to flee or give details of his time in captivity,
saying only that he has been back in Poland for
“some days”.
Suder’s mother told Polish radio he had been held in
a dark basement before his escape.
“Marcin Suder is already back home,” Foreign
Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on his official
Twitter account.
“He was very lucky, he managed to escape,”
foreign ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski
told AFP.
He added: “He’s here since some days, surrounded
by his family. He is in good health.”
Masked gunmen abducted the 34-year-old
freelancer, who worked for the Corbis agency and
other outlets, on July 24 during a raid on a media
centre in Saraqeb in the northwestern province of
Idlib.
No reason was given for his kidnapping and no one
publicly claimed responsibility for the abduction.
“Polish consular services in the region helped the
photographer return home,” Wojciechowski told
reporters.
“We also want to thank the (Polish) defence ministry
for ensuring his air transport from Turkey to
Poland.”
Suder’s mother said her son was in shock but
otherwise mentally fine.
“Physically, he’s thin and, let’s say, some marks of
something remain on his body. But he really doesn’t
look that bad,” Krystyna Jarosz told Poland’s
commercial RMF FM radio.
Without explaining the marks, she said he was held
in a dark basement, without food at first: “Later he
got a bit of food. It wasn’t a spa, I’ll put it that way.”
Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders says
Syria is the most dangerous country for media to
work in, with around 15 foreign journalists still
missing or held hostage there.
At least 25 professional journalists and 70 citizen
journalists have been killed since the start of the
Syrian revolt in March 2011, it said.