Frantic bid to free Irish aid worker
Government negotiators travel to Sudan after Darfur kidnapping
Sunday July 05 2009
THE Government jet left Ireland last night on its way to Sudan with key government officials to begin negotiations for the release of Sharon Commins, the 32-year-old Dublin woman kidnapped by gunmen in Darfur.
The officials were travelling via Cairo where they were due to pick up the Irish Ambassador to Egypt, Gerry Corr, who will lead the delegation of unnamed officials.
The team is believed to include the head of the Africa desk in Foreign Affairs, a senior military figure with experience in the region and a senior garda officer.
The aircraft will then travel directly on to the capital, Khartoum, early today amid increasing concerns about the fate of the Irish aid worker who had remained in the country despite the expulsion of other international aid agencies earlier this year.
The delegation will liaise closely with the Irish military contingent in the UN peace-keeping mission just across the border in Chad. So far no ransom demand has been made for Sharon Commins, from Clontarf, Dublin, who works with aid agency Goal.
She was kidnapped along with her Ugandan Goal colleague Hilda Kuwuki, 40, from the north Darfur town of Kutum on Friday.
It is the third kidnapping of foreign aid staff in Darfur since March, when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan president Omar Hassan al-Bashir to face charges of masterminding war crimes in the region.
"There has been no change in the situation, and we have yet to clarify who may have been responsible," said the Irish ambassador to Egypt, Gerry Corr. He described the current situation as "extremely sensitive".
Sharon's distraught family -- her father and mother, Mark and Agatha, and her two brothers Derek and Martin -- referred all queries to Goal chief John O'Shea, who said the organisation had pulled remaining staff out of the Darfur town as local police began a hunt for the kidnappers.
The family of the abducted aid worker was contacted by the Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin yesterday. Her father, Mark Commins, yesterday praised the efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs and other bodies, including the aid agency Goal.
"If people are doing half of what they say they are trying to, it should all turn out ok," he said at his home in Clontarf yesterday.
Earlier, her mother Agatha said all she wanted to hear was that her daughter had been released unharmed.
"I just want her to be released by whoever is holding her," she said. "Sharon has always loved her work and I thought she would be safe in Darfur because [she] was working for Goal.
"I know that John O'Shea and Goal protect their staff really well so this is a real shock", she said. "I've always been tormenting God praying that she'll be safe. But I was not worrrying constantly."
Mrs Commins said she was putting her hopes in the fact that this was the third kidnapping in the area in the last four months and so far no-one had been hurt.
Sharon had been working in Darfur for over a year with Goal when the kidnapping happened on Friday. She and her fellow worker were seized by around six armed men from their house in a compound in the northern Darfur town of Kutum before being bundled into a waiting vehicle and carried off. Their Sudanese guard was also captured but was later released.
The young Clontarf woman had trained as a journalist before going to work for the humanitarian organisation. Friends said she had been a student at Rathmines DIT, had travelled extensively, and at one stage worked in the Sydney Opera House before returning to DCU to study international relations.
Friends described her as a "very bright girl" who could have done anything but "wanted to save the world".
She worked as a personal assistant for Goal chief John O'Shea, but was anxious to travel abroad on Goal missions and spent some time in Sri Lanka at the time of the Asian tsunami.
Yesterday her Facebook page was full of messages of support from her friends, including one saying: "I know you can manage the situation, just hope that it will not take long and that your positive spirit will not let you down."
Aid groups said they had faced increasing hostility since the ruling by the International Criminal Court with Sudan expelling 13 humanitarian groups. A spokesman for the rebel Sudan Liberation Army denied any involvement in the kidnapping and blamed government-backed militias for the kidnap.
Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the accusation, saying authorities were doing all they could to locate the kidnappers.
Two groups of foreign aid workers kidnapped in Darfur in March and April were later released unharmed. President Mary McAleese expressed her concern at the kidnapping and conveyed to the Commins family her sincere hope that Sharon would be returned to safety as soon as possible along with her colleague.
Fine Gael's spokesman on Foreign Affairs, Billy Timmins, said that he would raise the issue of the safety of aid workers in Darfur with the Sudanese ambassador when he appears before the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs committee on Wednesday.
Prayers will be said at every Mass in the Dublin diocese today for Sharon's safe return.
- Don Lavery and JIM CUSACK
