Irish aid worker Sharon Commins will arrive home later today after being held hostage for more than 100 days in Darfur.
Ms Commins and her Ugandan colleague were abducted in early July and finally released in the early hours of yesterday morning.
She arrived in Khartoum this morning and will fly home using the Government jet to Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel, at 10:30pm tonight.
President Mary McAleese is to hold a reception on Thursday to mark Ms Commins's safe return.
"It feels just unbelievable, it's like as if the past 3½ months have been like a dream," she told The Irish Timesonly hours after her release.
“There was not one day that we weren’t fearful and extremely stressed and it’s an amazing, amazing feeling to be finally free.”
Ms Commins (32) from Clontarf, Dublin, and Hilda Kawuki (42), from Uganda, were abducted at gunpoint after armed men entered their compound in the north Darfur town of Kutum on July 3rd. The two women work for Irish aid agency Goal.
When it became apparent that their release was imminent yesterday, Ms Commins said her first thoughts were of her family.
“I was thinking, my God, I can’t wait to speak to my family. I haven’t spoken to them properly since we got abducted, apart from a two-minute phone conversation last month. And I thought of all my friends. So much was going through my mind . . . It was really exciting.”
Ms Commins said her time in captivity, during which the two women lived and slept in the open air in a mountainous area of Darfur, was extremely difficult.
“We were constantly fearing for our lives, especially in the initial stages when there were constant threats and intimidation. We weren’t sure at all if we were going to get out alive in those first months . . .
“When one of us was in really bad form, the other would try to be more upbeat. We just knew that there was no way our families and governments would allow this to continue.”
Speaking to RTÉ radio this morning, Ms Commins described being subjected to mock assassinations as her captors subjected the two women to intimidation.
“We’d be told to kneel on our knees and they would shoot around us so obviously the first time that happened we thought we were actually going to be shot…each time we would think ok I hope it’s a mock, but you never know," she said. "None of these guys wear glasses so you weren’t sure how accurate their sight is so it was an extremely dangerous situation to be in."
President Mary McAleese said today she would host a reception at Áras an Uachtaráin on Thursday in order to mark Ms Commins's safe return.
It will be attended by the Commins family and friends and also by representatives of all departments, agencies and organisations that assisted in her release and in providing support to the family during her captivity.