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Maoist insurgents in Nepal have released a Swiss aid worker and three local staff members they had taken hostage. The US government this year decided to pull out its Peace Corps volunteers from Nepal following explosions at its information centre in Kathmandu.



Maoist insurgents in Nepal have released a Swiss aid worker and three local staff members they had taken hostage. The US government this year decided to pull out its Peace Corps volunteers from Nepal following explosions at its information centre in Kathmandu.

Maoists free Swiss aid worker:

[World News]: Kathmandu, Dec 17 : Maoist insurgents in Nepal have released a Swiss aid worker and three local staff members they had taken hostage.

The insurgents released Franz Gaehwiler, a Swiss aid worker, and three Nepalese staff members in far-west Nepal late Thursday after holding them captive for 24 hours. They were abducted while travelling to Dadeldhura district from Dhangadi on Wednesday.

Franz Gaehwiler, a water and sanitation specialist, is employed in Nepal by Helvetas Nepal, the Swiss government's international development agency working in the areas of rural infrastructure agriculture, forestry and natural resources technical training and entrepreneur development.

The three Nepalese are Ramesh Chandra Bora, water resources management chief at Helvetas Nepal, Yogesh Pant, coordinator, monitoring and information department, and Prakash, their driver.

It was not immediately clear why the four were captured.

Helvetas Nepal said the four freed staff were flying back to Kathmandu Friday.

After meeting them, the aid authorities would decide whether to continue with the particular activity, it added.

This is the second reported incident of a foreign national being taken into captivity by the rebels. The Maoists, who claim to have set up their own parallel government in areas in Nepal, want all aid agencies working in their stronghold areas to take their permission prior to undertaking aid projects.

In some cases, they have reportedly demanded "tax" from the aid agencies.

The threat of extortion and risk to the life of staff has made several NGOs suspend their aid operations in affected areas or pull out.

The US government this year decided to pull out its Peace Corps volunteers from Nepal following explosions at its information centre in Kathmandu.

Earlier, the Maoists had taken prisoner a British officer from the British Army who was attending a camp for recruitment of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers. He was released unharmed later.

--Indo-Asian News Service

When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia."

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