Dagbladet has today, Saturday an article about a note regarding money for the transfer. This is a suggestion from “someone” we don’t know who, sent to us from Edvardsen. These “someone” hopes with no doubt to make some money. We were supposed to just pay, with no guarantee of a transfer of course. This is of course not something we’d even consider getting involved in.
It just proves what I’ve said from day 1. They are hostages and someone is constantly trying to squeeze money out of it. The abuse, the greed and the bottomless evil that has shown itself in this case is without comparison. All of the lies, the theft, the fraud. The boys have to bribe criminal guards every day to get their own food, water and medicine. Absolutely everyone seems to be corrupt, willing to do anything for money.
The boys are broke. They have no money to buy off corrupt criminals even if they wanted to. The cost for food and medication is almost destroying the families. It costs us about 3 300 USD a month. But luckily a lot of kind people out there have helped us a great deal with those expenses. The locals eat some kind of rice, boiled roots and a kind of corn pudding, Europeans can’t eat that, they get sick. So they eat imported food, and that’s expensive. They have to pay a man to shop the groceries, and he has to bribe the guards to get the food in to the prison. What kind of regime treats people like that? Maybe Amnesty should answer that! They haven’t answered our requests on mail before. The leader of Amnesty Norway said under pressure to NRK that they couldn’t involve themselves in two Norwegians when there are so many prisoners in Africa. What kind of nonsense is this?
I’ve said from day 1: Nothing is paid before they’re out. Giving money to thugs and corrupt people has never gone anywhere. It only leads to pressure for more.
We relate to the Foreign Ministry. They are the only ones who can get them out of this hell on earth. They have heard repeated promises that have been broken. We have to believe that the Foreign Ministry will succeed in the end. We hope and believe that the pressure will finally pay off.
Knut Moland, April 9th 2011
