GOAL WORKER Sharon Commins arrived home just before midnight last night to an emotional welcome from family and friends.
Ms Commins, freed after more than three months captivity in the Darfur region of Sudan, arrived at Casement aerodrome in Baldonnel on the Government jet.
The plane landed at 23.53, almost 90 minutes behind schedule.
As the door slid back and she prepared to disembark into the chilly night, a party of eight walked towards the plane. They included Sharon’s parents, Agatha and Mark, her brother Derek and his wife Ashling and brother Martin with his girlfriend, Áine.
Also in the party were Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, and Brig Gen Ralph James. After tight, lingering hugs for each family member, there was loud laughter as Mr Martin stepped in for a kiss and a hug.
Ms Commins looked well and happy, smiling broadly when asked how she was. “Brilliant, brilliant . . . It’s great to be here . . . like a dream. I dreamt so often when I was on top of the mountain about coming home. I hope I don’t wake up on the top of a mountain in a few minutes . . .”
Ms Commins told reporters that she would be celebrating by drinking a lot of champagne and was looking forward to having eggs Benedict, a meal she had been craving since day seven of her captivity.
She added that she only knew 15 minutes before they got into the car to make the journey back that they were to be released.
Her mother said: “The darkest hours we have ever been in, we have been through it. We are going to hold on very tightly to her. Kutu won’t be seeing Sharon anymore.”
Mr Martin said: “It was a long and painful wait, but as you see here this evening, it was all worth while.”
Ms Commins, from Clontarf, Dublin and her colleague Hilda Kawuki (42), from Uganda, were abducted by an armed gang in early July and finally freed in the early hours of Sunday morning. The two women, who work for Irish aid agency Goal, were transferred from Darfur to Khartoum yesterday morning. Ms Commins left the Sudanese capital in the afternoon on the Government jet which had been dispatched from Baldonnel to bring her home.
In an interview with The Irish Times, the two women described how their captors had initially tried to reassure them but then turned threatening and abusive, going on to subject them to mock executions.
“I had never seen that level of anger and sheer evilness in people’s eyes,” Ms Commins recalled. “It was a shock to have people screaming at you in Arabic and pointing a gun to your head or shooting bullets around you.
“They would make us sit down or force us on our knees . . . with everyone pointing guns at us. They would sometimes shoot a few bullets to frighten us. Each time you’re hoping it is a mock assassination but you don’t know . . . If they let go of a bullet, you’re gone.”
The two women were moved several times around a mountain range in Darfur, where they were held in the open air and forced to survive on strictly rationed food and water supplies. The conditions were so harsh even their captors found it difficult to cope. “Any guard who had to guard us more than 10 days was literally cracking up,” said Ms Commins. “There was very close to emotional breakdowns taking place and these were people who live there.”
She said some of the gang sympathised with them and others even seemed to question the decision to kidnap them for ransom.
“With one or two of the guards, there were moments when you would start crying and they would soften and be on the verge of crying themselves,” she recalled. “For them, it was just money, but occasionally they did seem to see how badly they were making us suffer.”
Meanwhile, the Sudanese government minister who oversaw negotiations for the women’s release has said criminal charges will be brought. “We are keen to bring them to justice and punish them. We will file a criminal case against them,” Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister Abdul Bagi al-Jailani told The Irish Times. “We know them by name, clan and tribe, so they will never escape punishment.”