The wife of one of the guards who held a Briton and an Italian hostage in northern Nigeria said yesterday that the two men were taken into a toilet and shot dead during a failed attempt to rescue them by British and Nigerian forces.
The wife, who gave her name only as Hauwa and said she was 31, cried into her hands as she spoke to Reuters.
Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara were kidnapped last May while working for a construction company in northwest Nigeria. They were killed on March 8 by their captors after gunfire erupted during an abortive rescue attempt.
Lamolinara's body was returned to Rome yesterday and received with full honours by the justice minister. It was taken to a hospital for an autopsy.
Hauwa said bullets flew into the room where she and her husband were staying, killing her husband.
“After that, there were about six men who came out of the house with the two hostages,” she said. “They came into our wing of the compound, pushed the captives into the toilet and just shot them. I screamed.”
She denied knowing the hostages had been living in the same compound as her. She said they were kept in the main house which she was strictly forbidden to enter.
Nigerian authorities have detained five Islamist militants suspected of involvement in the kidnapping. Two of the men were arrested before the rescue attempt and three at the compound where the raid took place.
“I don't know why they didn't arrest me; I really didn't know anything about the hostages. No guard was allowed in the main house. The forces saw me crying next to my husband's body, which they took away,” she said.
She said she had lived in the house for four months after her husband got a job there as a guard. But she said she never suspected anything was wrong.
The people using the main house arrived at night and usually left very early in the morning, she said.
A diplomatic row broke out between London and Rome on Friday over Britain's failure to inform the Italian government before launching the botched hostage rescue mission.
Italian media yesterday criticised Britain for viewing Italy as an unreliable second-class ally over London's failure to consult Rome before launching the rescue mission, and politicians stepped up demands that Britain provide a precise explanation of exactly what happened.
Meanwhile, President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday formally commiserated with the families, people and governments of Britain and Italy over the killing of Chris McManus, a British citizen and Franco Lamorina, Italia.
In two separate letters of condolence to David Cameron and Mario Monti, the Prime Ministers of Britain and Italy respectively which were delivered through diplomatic channels, President Jonathan said that the hearts of the people and government of Nigeria go out to the members of the immediate families of the victims in their moment of grief.
A statement By Dr. Reuben Abati, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, quoted Jonathan as praying in the letters that the “Almighty God imbues them with the fortitude to cope with this painful tragedy.”
President Jonathan, the statement further noted, also assured the leaders of both countries that “the Nigerian Government remains resolutely committed to facing up squarely to the challenge of terrorism on our shores and in the international community.”
He described the cooperation the Nigerian Government had enjoyed from both Prime Ministers in the fight against terrorism in the country as “invaluable”.
“As we join forces with the rest of the world in frontally confronting the menace of terrorism in all ramifications, the special relations and strong ties that exist among the three nations “can only grow deeper and stronger,” he added.
Hostages Lived Final Days In Squalour
The two hostages from Italy and Britain found dead during a botched rescue operation spent their final days living in bare squalour under the watchful eye of their alleged al-Qaeda-linked captors, drinking water drawn from an underground tank and possibly enduring bouts of malaria and other illnesses.
The bodies of Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara were found Thursday during a joint British-Nigerian rescue operation, which has ignited a diplomatic dispute with Italy. The country’s president accused Britain of an 'inexplicable' failure to consult with Italy before the bungled attempt to rescue the hostages.
At the house where their bodies were discovered, the water supply came from dipping a plastic bucket into a simple underground tank in Sokoto, the major city of Nigeria’s dusty northwest. Illnesses apparently struck as well: the remains of anti-malaria tablets, cough medicines and penicillin creams littered the compound’s dirt courtyard.
And off one unfurnished bedroom, blood pooled under a toilet and a smashed sink in a tiny bathroom, the site where those living around the compound say hostages McManus, of Britain, and Lamolinara, of Italy, died at the hands of their captors.
As curious children poked their hands Friday through holes left behind by large-caliber ammunition fired in the botched rescue, Italy demanded an explanation for why it learned about the raid only after British special forces began their assault with Nigeria’s military. Confusion also remained over who was responsible for the kidnapping in the first place, as a radical Islamist sect in Nigeria initially blamed for the abduction denied it was involved.
The rescue attempt began Thursday morning in Sokoto’s Mabera neighbourhood, a sprawling maze of sandy roads and single-storey cement homes on what used to be fertile farmland surrounding the city of 500,000 people. Residents said a seemingly unending barrage of gunfire followed, as did an attack led by a military armoured personnel carrier.
Once inside in the compound, soldiers found the two men had been killed. Details of how and when they died remained unclear Friday, said Steve Field, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron. But Field said “early indications were that both men were murdered by their captors before they could be rescued.’’
The operation grew out of cooperation between Nigeria’s security forces and British military and intelligence officers who had been in the country for several months, officials familiar with the details of the operation said. Within recent weeks, a contingent of special forces soldiers — drawn from Britain’s elite Special Boat Service — arrived in Nigeria to assist, officials said.