Two Italian tourists freed in Libya after being kidnapped in August in Niger denounced their captors today as bandits and said they were mistreated during their ordeal.
"They initially told us they were taking us hostage to highlight their demands for Niger's government to respect human rights," Claudio Chiodi told a news conference in the Libyan capital Tripoli.
"But at the end we discovered that their motives were personal gains. They are bandits," he said, adding: "Our conditions were very bad. We lived without food and water for two weeks."
Twenty mostly Italian tourists, including Chiodi and Ivano De Capitani, were kidnapped on Aug. 22 near Niger's border with Chad by an armed group calling itself the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Sahara (FARS).
FARS is one of a number of groups demanding more autonomy from a black African-dominated government far away in the Niamey.
Most of the tourists were released the next day but, according to Chiodi who was interviewed by Reuters by satellite phone during his captivity, the kidnappers took the two Italian men to a mountain hideout in a mined area along the remote border.
Libya's Gaddafi Development Foundation, a charity group chaired by the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al Islam, said it intervened to secure the men's release after it was approached by the Italian Foreign Ministry.