Freed hostages long to be reunited with husbands

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.