Brussels/Paris, April 11, 2003 - Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is elated and relieved to learn that two members of their international team in Baghdad have been freed after disappearing April 2. Up until today, MSF had received no news of their whereabouts. The two volunteers, François Calas, a 44-year-old Head of Mission from France, and Ibrahim Younis, a 31-year-old logistician from Sudan, are part of a 6-person team that had been working alongside Iraqi medical colleagues at al Kindi hospital, in northeast Baghdad for several weeks.
Calas and Younis have been able to contact their families and colleagues. Though weakened by nine days of detention, they are doing fine. They remain in Baghdad where they join their four other MSF colleagues.
Meanwhile, MSF remains concerned about Arjan Erkel, another MSF volunteer who was kidnapped in the North Caucasus on August 12, 2002. MSF has not received any news as to his whereabouts.
