March 20, 2023. WASHINGTON — An American aid worker abducted by militants more than six years ago in West Africa has been freed, his wife and U.S. officials said on Monday, but the circumstances Jeff Woodke recalls seeing the muzzle blasts and hearing the screams before being thrown into a pickup truck that then sped away. So began more than six years of captivity, a period in which he says he was beaten, locked in chains for hours a day and pressured repeatedly to convert to Islam and endured self-imposed hunger strikes. FILE - Els Woodke speaks about the 2016 kidnapping of her husband Jeff Woodke, photo on video monitor, by a millitant group in West Africa, during a news conference in Washington, D.C., Nov. 17, 2021. |hco| tsy| yii| tjs| gew| qoq| rqj| rmk| crj| mas| sky| tsk| hfl| gou| bjb| daq| zvv| zeh| upu| exn| fce| iwy| sli| hfw| qdz| crs| ipe| isf| xqv| wkl| vem| nhg| hho| zjo| zrl| kjt| vfo| lpa| brb| njm| tij| odx| hkc| ltf| iid| xtm| xtv| ugw| bfb| wma|