Two European women held hostage in Niger for a year and a half are finally free, arriving in Benghazi, Libya, after an ordeal that drew quiet diplomatic efforts across the Sahel. Swiss national Eva Gretzmacher, 76, and Austrian Claudia Abbt, 69, were released this week, officials confirmed.
According to reports, the two women had been held by armed groups in Niger’s vast desert north since early 2025. Details of the negotiations remain closely guarded, but their arrival in eastern Libya — under the control of Khalifa Haftar’s forces — suggests a complex, multi-party arrangement.
Eighteen Months in Captivity
Kidnapping of Westerners has become a grim constant across the Sahel, where jihadist groups and criminal gangs finance operations through ransom. Elderly hostages face particular peril in the region’s harsh conditions, and the women’s survival through eighteen months of captivity is being described as remarkable.
Swiss and Austrian diplomats worked the case for over a year, officials said, coordinating with regional intermediaries. Neither government has disclosed whether a ransom was paid — the standard official silence in such cases, meant to avoid encouraging further kidnappings.
Haftar’s Sahel Play
The choice of Benghazi as the handover point is politically telling. Haftar’s eastern Libyan administration has been expanding its influence across the Sahel, positioning itself as a security partner to Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso’s military governments. Brokering a high-profile hostage release burnishes that image on the international stage.
For the families of Gretzmacher and Abbt, the geopolitics are secondary: after eighteen months of fear, the two women are free and receiving medical checks. Officials said repatriation to Switzerland and Austria is being arranged, and both governments thanked everyone involved in securing the release.
The Sahel’s hostage economy has endured despite years of military operations, with armed groups treating kidnapping as both revenue and leverage. European governments maintain official policies against paying ransoms, though intermediaries often feature in the murky final stages of a release. For now, officials in Bern and Vienna say their focus is on the women’s health and privacy — and on getting them home.
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