The 83-year-old American nun who was kidnapped by gunmen in April in north-central Burkina Faso has been released, confirmed on Wednesday (31) the Bishop of Kaya City, Théophile Nare.
“With great joy and gratitude to God, we inform everyone that Sister Suellen Tennyson , the Marian nun kidnapped in Yalgo on the night of Monday, April 4 to Tuesday, April 5, 2022, was released by her captors,” said the Bishop of Kaya, a town in north-central region about 100 kilometers from Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso.
“Sister Suellen is currently in a safe place and with good health,” Nare added in a statement, noting that he had “no information about the conditions of his release.”
Tennyson, from the Congregation of the Marian Sisters of the Holy Cross, had been living in Yalgo since October 2017. 2014, about 110 kilometers from Kaya.
At the time of his kidnapping ro, the bishop explained that Suellen Tennyson was taken “to an unknown destination by her captors who, before leaving, destroyed the rooms” and “sabotaged the community vehicle, which they tried to steal.”
O The nun’s abduction has not been claimed by any jihadist group, but the attacks in Burkina Faso are usually carried out by groups linked to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
After Tennyson’s release, five Westerners remain hostages in the central Sahel (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso) after the kidnapping of French journalist Olivier Dubois in April 2021 by an al-Qaida-affiliated group in Gao (northern Mali).
Burkina Faso has suffered repeated jihadist attacks since April 2015, when members of an al-Qaida-affiliated group kidnapped a Romanian security guard at a Tambao manganese mine in north of the country, which is still missing.
The region most affected by insecurity in Burkina Faso is the Sahel, which borders Mal i and Niger, although jihadism has also spread to other neighboring areas and, since 2018, to the eastern region of the country.
