As one American family celebrates the release of a loved one, pirates in Somalia continue to hold at least one other U.S. citizen captive. Just days before a daring rescue freed American aid worker Jessica Buchanan and her Danish colleague Poul Hagen, a renowned American reporter was nabbed while working on a book about piracy. Click below to find out more.
Michael Scott Moore, who rose to prominence as a surfing writer, was kidnapped on his way to the airport in Somalia by 15 men, a news website, the Somali Report said.
There is no indication the American military is planning to rescue him. But many commenters have speculated President Obama could have been talking about Moore when he called Tuesday’s daring raid “yet another message to the world that the United States of America will stand strongly against any threats to our people.”
“We are aware of news reports that a U.S. citizen has been kidnapped in northern Somalia and we are concerned about the individual’s safety and well-being,” Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said at a news briefing Wednesday. “We have been in contact with the individual’s family and we are working with contacts in Kenya and Somalia to ascertain further information.”
Somalia, which hasn’t had a functional government in 21 years, is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world. Hostages are often held for massive ransoms. Last year, four American hostages were killed by Somali pirates after negotiations between the American military and the hostage takers failed. A British couple spent nearly a year in capitivity before being freed in 2011.
According to Moore’s biography on the Miller-McCune company homepage, he was a 2006-07 Fulbright fellow in Germany and has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, and Der Spiegel Online in Berlin, where he’s an editor at large.
Moore was born in Southern California and has dual U.S.-German citizenship.
