Australian doctor Kenneth Elliott freed after seven years of captivity in Africa

A Christian missionary doctor has finally been released after he was kidnapped by a West African group closely linked to al-Qaeda.

Dr Kenneth Elliot moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 and set up a 120-bed clinic. Picture: ABC News

Australian doctor Kenneth Elliott has been freed after seven years in captivity in West Africa.

Kenneth Elliott, 88, and his wife Jocelyn were abducted by al-Qa’ida-linked jihadists in Burkina Faso in January 2016. Jocelyn was released three weeks later after Niger’s government intervened.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday night that Dr Elliot had returned to Australia.

“Dr Elliott is safe and well and has been reunited with his wife Jocelyn and their children,” she said. “I am so pleased that his release has been secured and he is safely again with his family.”

In a statement on Friday, Dr Elliott’s family thanked “the Australian government and all who have been involved over time to secure his release”.

“At 88 years of age, and after many years away from home, Dr Elliott now needs time and privacy to rest and rebuild strength.”

The husband-and-wife duo were Christian missionary doctors who moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 and set up a 120-bed clinic. They were kidnapped in a cross-border raid from the town they had lived in for 40 years, Djibo, a northern town close to the Mali and Niger borders.

The kidnappers were an al-Qa’ida offshoot known then as “Emirate of the Sahara” and now as Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) – meaning “Group to Support Islam and Muslims”.

Kenneth Elliott with his wife Jocelyn. Source: Facebook

The group was closely linked to ‘al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Region of Maghreb’ (AQIM), which claimed responsibility for the pair’s kidnapping in an audio statement.

Jocelyn was later flown back to Burkina Faso aboard a presidential plane accompanied by Niger’s Foreign Minister Aichatou Kane Boualama. At the time, it was said that Niger and Burkina Faso were continuing to try to secure the release of her husband.

Australian officials stationed across West Africa were likely to have engaged the French for assistance in negotiation and intelligence-gathering. France, the former colonial power in the region, retains strong ties there.

The Weekend Australian was told at the UN Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, in November 2016 that talks were under way to try to have Dr Elliott released, although it was never clear who those talks were with. Senator Wong said on Friday that the Australian government had “worked tirelessly” and over many years to secure Dr Elliot’s release.

The Sahel region – which includes Niger, Mali, Sudan and Eritrea – is causing considerable concern for Western intelligence agencies due to the growing influence there of ISIS and its affiliates.

Until January 15, 2016, the day the Elliotts were kidnapped, Burkina Faso had largely avoided the Islamist terror attacks which had plagued West Africa.

Yet, on the same day the French-speaking Elliotts were taken from the Baraboule district, AQIM launched an attack in the capital Ouagadougou. They targeted the Splendid Hotel and nearby Cappuccino restaurant, both popular with Westerners, with guns and explosives.

Twenty-nine people died in the siege, including citizens from Canada, Ukraine, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US. French citizens were also killed, with AQIM claiming the attacks were “revenge” against France and the West.

National security expert Clive Williams, writing in The Strategist in October 2020, sad the “eight-year-old jihadist insurgency that began in the north of Mali had spread to the country’s centre and was affecting Niger and Burkina Faso”.

He said AQIM had a long history of taking hostages in the Sahel and back then, he said they had raised an estimated $US50m through kidnapping for ransom.