Vodu Ababaei, the 79-year-old Israeli who was kidnapped in Ethiopia, was released on Monday from his captors in the Gondar area by the local police, and was transferred to the city. He is expected to leave the country and return to Israel in the coming days. The Israeli embassy in Ethiopia was updated by the local police.
About two weeks ago, negotiations between plainclothes policemen and representatives of the kidnappers blew up, and the incident ended in a shootout.
The circumstances of the kidnapping and the events there remain unclear, and will probably not be fully clarified until he returns to Israel, if at all.
Foreign Ministry had said the Israeli was not in distress
About two weeks ago, Israeli officials said that according to information received by the authorities in Israel, Vodu Ababaei, the 79-year-old Israeli who was feared to have been kidnapped in Ethiopia, was not in distress - and at that point, the handling of his case was completed, as it was suspected that his kidnapping was staged.
One of his relatives told Walla at the time that the family members continued to worry about him very much, and that they did not have any information about him.
"We have been trying since this morning to contact the Foreign Ministry and they are not answering us," he explained at the time. "We know that in the news in Gondar this morning they said that according to the police there is no person abducted in Ethiopia, and it could be that they deduced this in Israel from that. But we know that in Ethiopia, sometimes just like in Israel, no investigation is opened if there is no official complaint."
The Israeli, a pensioner and father, flew on a month-long trip, and was supposed to return already at the beginning of July - but a week before the date of his return he was kidnapped in the jungle. "We contacted the Foreign Ministry, which contacted the Ethiopian embassy, who said it was being processed, but there is nothing new," said the man's nephew.