Cabinda separatists release last two Portuguese hostages

The last two Portuguese men held hostage in northern Angola by Cabinda separatist guerrillas have been freed, Foreign Minister Jaime Gama and a rebel official announced Monday, according to a Lusa report. Gama, speaking in Luxembourg, said the two construction company employees, who were held in jungle captivity for 13 months, had been freed “moments ago”, were “under Portuguese control” and were being taken to a “secure place, the report said.

Declining to give details of the release of Marco Santos and Manuel da Mota Nunes, Gama said the “operation is underway” to fly them home.
Portuguese ambassador in Angola, Fernando Oliveira Neves, told Lusa the two men would likely be flown back to Portugal aboard a chartered plane on Tuesday. The Lisbon-based representative of the Armed Forces faction of the Cabinda Enclave Liberation Front (FLEC) told Lusa that Santos and Mota Nunes had arrived in the Congolese city of Pointe Noire, after a “long walk”, following their release from the insurgents’ bush headquarters “eight days ago”. A third FLEC hostage, seized with Santos and Mota Nunes on 24 May 2000, was freed on 3 April in what the guerrillas termed a “gesture of good will”.

Five other Portuguese construction company employees, who were captured by a rival separatist Cabinda movement, were freed on 23 May after 74 days of jungle captivity. All the previously freed hostages said they had been treated well by their captors, the report said.