Africa — Latin America — Asia — Middle East

Extract

On 30 June, the ICRC, acting as a neutral intermediary at the request of all the interested parties, arranged for 55 persons held by UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) to leave Angola on board an aircraft chartered for the purpose. This group consisted of 45 Czechoslovaks (including 38 women and children) and 10 Portuguese citizens; they had all been taken prisoner in March at Alto Catumbela, near the country's Atlantic coast. The Portuguese citizens were handed over to their diplomatic representatives in Johannesburg (South Africa) and the Czechoslovaks were flown on board another ICRC aircraft to Kinshasa (Zaire), where they were handed over to the consular authorities of their country. Before the transfer, three ICRC delegates, accompanied by a nurse and a doctor, spent a week at a UNITA base in southern Angola, where they gave medical care, distributed food, clothing and transmitted family messages to the detainees.