Victoria Ojeme, with agency report

ABUJA—The Sierra Leone Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, Major General Alfred Nelson- Williams, retd, who was abducted in Kaduna last Friday, was yesterday freed by the police.

“The diplomat has been reunited with the Sierra Leonean High Commissioner (ambassador) and his family.

“We were able to locate where he was kept at about 1500 hours (1400 GMT). He is in sound health,” said police spokesman, Don Awunah.

Further details about the circumstances of his release were not immediately available and it was not known whether a ransom was paid, despite unconfirmed local reports that $40 million was demanded by the kidnappers.

“Alfred Nelson-Williams, Freetown’s defence attache and deputy head of the country’s mission in Abuja, was abducted last Friday, while travelling to Kaduna for a military passing out parade.

“Sierra Leone sent a special envoy to Abuja to act as an intermediary and open a line of communication between the kidnappers and the high commission,” Presidential spokesman, Abdulai Baytraytay, said on Monday.

He added that President Ernest Bai Koroma was in “round-the-clock contact” with his Nigerian counterpart, Muhammadu Buhari.

Nelson-Williams’s abduction was the first of a Sierra Leone diplomat anywhere in the world since the country gained independence in 1961, foreign ministry sources in Freetown said.