German humanitarian Jörg Lange, kidnapped in 2018 in western Niger, has been officially released, thanks in part to the intervention of the Moroccan secret service, reports the German media Der Spiegel.
The release process lasted four months, said the same source.
The 63-year-old hostage was working in Niger for the NGO Help, before being kidnapped in the west of the city and taken north, not far from the Malian border. He was then sold to the military and terrorist organization “Islamic State in the Great Sahara.”
The kidnappers reportedly demanded a seven-figure ransom for their hostage in the past, the source said.
According to German media, Lange was first handed over on Thursday by his captors in northern Mali to Moroccan mediators, who then took him to the German embassy in the Malian capital Bamako.
“The development worker is doing well, given the circumstances. He should now be brought back to Germany as soon as possible,” it is reported.
Cooperation in the fight against terrorism and extremism was agreed in late October between Germany and Morocco, on the sidelines of a meeting between the two countries.
Morocco, on the sidelines of a meeting of a joint security committee, composed of the Pole of international police cooperation at the Directorate General of National Security (DGSN) and liaison officers assigned to the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Rabat.
A few months after the resumption of diplomatic relations between Rabat and Berlin, the head of the DGSN Abdellatif Hammouchi had received last June, the Director General of the Federal Police of Germany Dieter Romann, with the aim of developing mechanisms for bilateral cooperation in the field of security.
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