Amanda Lindhout is one of the most popular and richest Journalist who was born on June 12, 1981 in Red Deer, Canada. Lindhout was born in 1981 in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. After her parents separated, Lindhout lived in Sylvan Lake, Alberta. She and her two brothers (Mark and Nathaniel) were raised by their mother, Lorinda, with Amanda spending much of her youth reading National Geographic Magazine. Lindhout’s father had chronic health problems, and depended on disability payments. Her mother held a minimum-wage job. Lindhout had early aspirations to become a model and did some brief modelling work. She also considered enrolling in a beautician’s school.
On August 23, 2008, two days after having arrived in Mogadishu, Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, a 37-year-old freelance Australian photojournalist from Brisbane, were kidnapped along with their Somali translator, Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, their driver, Mahad Isse, and a driver from the Shamo Hotel, Marwali. They were on their way to conduct interviews at an internally displaced person (IDP) camp when they were stopped by gunmen. The abductors were teenage insurgents from the Hizbul Islam fundamentalist group. The two were kidnapped in lieu of two more experienced journalists (one of whom was National Geographic Magazine reporter Robert Draper), who had that morning beefed up their security before leaving to examine a refugee camp. Because of this move, Lindhout and Brennan were kidnapped instead. While in captivity, Lindhout was separated from Brennan and subsequently raped and tortured repeatedly.
On June 10, 2009, CTV News received a phone call from a tearful Lindhout who seemed to be reading a statement: “My name is Amanda Lindhout and I am a Canadian citizen and I’ve been held hostage by gunmen in Somalia for nearly 10 months. I’m in a desperate situation. I’m being kept in a dark, windowless, room in chains without any clean drinking water and little or no food. I’ve been very sick for months without any medicine…. I love my country and want to live to see it again. Without food or medicine, I will die here.”
Elmi and the two drivers were released on January 15, 2009. The kidnappers later lowered the ransom demand to $1 million.
On September 17, Al Jazeera featured footage of Lindhout and Brennan in captivity surrounded by gunmen. On October 13, 2008, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of US$2.5 million by October 28. On February 23, 2009, the Canadian Association of Journalists urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to help secure the release of Lindhout and Khadija Abdul Qahaar, a Canadian woman who was kidnapped in November.
