Freed hostages long to be reunited with husbands

Teuku Agam Muzakkir and Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Lhokseumawe/Jakarta

The women hostages recently released by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) said on Friday they could not wait to see their husbands and children, whom they have not met since their abductions in June last year.

Cut Soraya, 31, told journalists in Lhokseumawe that she had been so excited to hear the voice of her husband, First. Lt. Agung Setyo Budi, when they talked on the phone shortly after her release on Thursday. She had only been married to the Air Force officer a few months before her kidnapping.

Soraya said she wanted to share her sadness with him over the miscarriage she had suffered during her third month of pregnancy. The young woman had not yet informed her husband that she was pregnant before she was kidnapped by GAM.

"I want to move to Jakarta and live together with my husband again. What happened is so sad. I wasn't able to protect my baby. I was exhausted," Soraya said in tears from a wheelchair.

Soraya said her husband, who is currently stationed in the West Java capital of Bandung, had contacted her by telephone shortly after her reunion.

"My husband really wants to take me home," Soraya said proudly.

Her elder sister, Syafrida, 36, also expressed her impatience to hug her three children and her husband, Lt. Col. Azhari, an Air Force officer stationed in Jakarta. The two sisters are Acehnese.

"I really want to meet my husband and children and be together again with them as a family," Syafrida said.

When contacted by The Jakarta Post, Azhar said he was also eager to see his wife, and would do so soon. "I am still on duty now," the officer said.

The reunion of this couple will be very meaningful, especially as Syafrida reported to the North Aceh police in July that RCTI reporter Ersa Siregar had taking away his wife Syafrida without his permission.

Ersa, his cameraman Ferry Santoro, their driver Rachmansyah and the two sisters were kidnaped by GAM as they were on their way from Lhokseumawe to Langsa in East Aceh. Ersa was killed on Dec. 29 during an armed clash between GAM and the Indonesian Military (TNI). The driver was freed in early December, while Ferry is still held by GAM.

"I really do miss my husband," Syafrida said on Thursday.

Syafrida and Soraya were freed on Thursday in East Aceh, but controversy has been rife ever since. The military has claimed that the two women were freed after a clash between GAM fighters and soldiers from the elite infantry Raiders unit at Tungkah Gajah village in East Aceh regency.

GAM, however, said that they had decided to release the women and ordered them to move in the direction of military lines. The guerrillas claim that the two women were released on Sunday after Indonesian troops persisted in firing mortar rounds on GAM fighters in the village.

The fate of Ferry and the other hostages, however, is unclear as the TNI and GAM have failed to reach an agreement over how they should be released.