Armed group released its last 3 hostages in Papua New Guinea

• Prime Minister James Marape has released four hostages taken for ransom.
• Including a New Zealander who teaches at an Australian institution.
• In a different instance earlier this month, separatist rebels in Papua kidnapped a New Zealand pilot.

All of the captives who had been taken prisoner by armed criminals in a remote area had been released, according to Papua New Guinea‘s Prime Minister James Marape.

“We apologize to the families of those taken as hostages for ransom, it took us a while but the last three have been successfully returned through covert operations with no (ransom) paid,” Marape wrote in a Facebook post.

A group of heavily armed men had taken four hostages, including foreign nationals and local tour guides, but one of them, a lady, was released on Wednesday. On Monday, national police had referred to the individuals as “opportunists.”

The group, which included a New Zealander who teaches at an Australian institution, were released on Sunday, and New Zealand‘s foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta expressed her satisfaction in a tweet.

The hostage-takers discovered the group “by happenstance,” according to PNG Police Commissioner David Manning, and took them into the woods.

“These are opportunists that have obviously not thought this situation through before they acted, and have been asking for cash to be paid,” Manning said.

Papua New Guinea, a country in the Pacific with a population of over 9 million, shares an island with the unruly Papua province of Indonesia.

In a different instance earlier this month, separatist rebels in Papua kidnapped a New Zealand pilot.

The pilot, who the local police identified as Philip Mehrtens, was apprehended after a commercial Susi Air charter plane landed at Paro Airport in the isolated highlands of the Nduga district.

The group had earlier called for the suspension of all inbound flights to Paro Airport and threatened withholding the pilot’s release until Indonesian authorities recognized Papuan independence.

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