JERUSALEM - Freed British human rights worker Kate Burton has told friends that she wants to return to Gaza, despite the 58 hours she and her parents were held by armed Palestinian kidnappers.
Burton, 24, and her parents, Hugh and Helen, were handed to British officials in Gaza City more than two days after being seized at gunpoint by masked militants outside the southern border town of Rafah.
A delicately worded statement issued by the family said that Burton, who is employed by the Gaza based Al-Mezan human rights group, "plans to stay in the region and continue working with the Palestinian people".
It added that the family were in good health and had been treated "extremely well" during their ordeal.
After her release Burton, who was brought with her parents to Jerusalem yesterday, told Danilo de la Torre, a friend who works for a Ramallah-based Spanish NGO, that after a period of initial "nervousness" she became certain that the family would be treated well by her kidnappers.
"She said she was quite sure that nothing was going to happen to them," De La Torre said.
De La Torre, 28, said Burton had told him she had been watching BBC World in a Gaza safe house - one of three in which the family were held - late on Saturday NZ time when she saw news that she and her parents had been released. "She said she thought 'Wow. I'm still here'."
In fact there was a delay of more than four hours while the kidnappers, who British officials believe were a splinter group of the hardline Gazan Palestinian Resistance Committees, negotiated the issuing of a video showing a masked gunman reading out their demands while Burton stood impassively beside him.
Friends and colleagues said that Burton was planning an early return to Gaza. Efforts to prevent further kidnaps would be among her aims. An official said she engaged in "long ideological debates in Arabic" with her captors during the family's ordeal.
That appears to have been behind the passage in the statement saying that she wanted to help to "improve their external image", as well as "to alleviate the difficult conditions being suffered by the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip".
According to one official, only an initial debriefing of the Burtons had taken place, because of the family's exhaustion. But Kate Burton may have been reluctant to give a detailed description of her captors, possibly to avoid compromising herself in the event of a return to Gaza. Although officials stressed that she had been in a grave situation, one friend said the kidnappers remained masked throughout the two days, and that Burton had little clue as to their identity.
The video released by the kidnappers called on Britain and other Western countries to put pressure on Israel to rescind the artillery and missile-enforced "buffer zone" declared in northern Gaza to stop Qassam rocket attacks, and threatened to kidnap European election monitors.
An official said the British did not know what demands, if any, had passed between the kidnappers and Palestinian officials during 18 hours of secret negotiations in the run-up to the Burtons' release. But he was adamant that there had been no negotiations with the British themselves.
AL-MEZAN: 'JUSTICE AND EQUALITY'
* Chartered "to promote, protect and prevent violations of human rights".
* Arabic for balance or scales, as well as justice and equity.
* Records alleged human rights violations, such as military attacks on civilian areas that result in widespread civilian casualties.
* Provides legal aid and conducts educational activities to raise awareness of basic human rights.
- INDEPENDENT
Freed hostage vows return to Gaza
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