Donal Ó Súilleabháin, the Irish aid worker kidnapped last week in Ethiopia, has said he is "incredibly relieved" to be released from captivity.
Speaking for the first time about his ordeal after arriving in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa yesterday, Mr Ó Súilleabháin (41) said he was "just glad it's all over". The Irish Red Cross engineer and his Ethiopian colleague were released on Saturday after six days in captivity.
Although still shaken, Mr Ó Súilleabháin said he was not harmed. "Despite the fact that we were forcibly taken, I'm physically fine and mentally fine," he said. "There was no violence used against either of us."
The Sligo man was travelling with seven Ethiopian Red Cross members when an armed group abducted him and his colleague near the Southern town of Godé on September 18th.
"The initial encounter was very tense, there was a lot of uncertainty about what would happen," he said. "I'd say this lasted for just over an hour and that was difficult. After they separated myself and my colleague from the group, I still didn't know what they were going to do."
They were kept outdoors at all times and were mostly given spaghetti and rice to eat and tea and water to drink. "We were kept moving all the time and kept away from any roads," he said.
"There was a huge amount of walking and on one occasion I reckon we walked for 30km."
His captors were "distant and reserved" at the start and never revealed much about themselves. "They completely concealed anything at all that would give us any clue about what kind of people they were. I told them quite a bit about myself and my parents back home in Ireland just to try to establish some kind of personal rapport with them."
Last Friday, their captors, who identified themselves as the United Western Somali Liberation Front, said in a statement that they had kidnapped Mr Ó Súilleabháin and his colleague after mistaking them for oil workers.
"We tried to explain who we were and what projects we were working on for the Red Cross, the nature of the Red Cross organisation and the benefits of what we were doing for the people in the area. It was quite tense at the beginning, so it was very difficult to get a sense of where they were coming from. We really only realised at the end that there was this issue about the oil workers."
The International Committee of the Red Cross negotiated the men's release. Mr Ó Súilleabháin said the fact that the captors kept in contact with them using one of the Red Cross satellite phones helped them greatly. "You cannot overestimate how important this was for us. Throughout this time, I thought about my parents back home and it was great for me to at least know that they were reassured that I was okay."
He was glad his brother Eoin had been in Ethiopia in the last few days and he was looking forward to seeing the rest of his family. "I'm really looking forward to that and I hope that I get the privacy that I need to spend some time with my mother and father.
"I don't think it's possible for me to stay in Ethiopia after everything that has happened. I'm sorry to leave as this is a great country and the people here are very nice, but that's the way it is. As for my future plans, right now my priority is my parents, they have been through a terrible ordeal and I really would never want them to go through anything like this again."