The father of a Japanese student freed yesterday, eight months after being snatched by bandits in Iran, expressed relief and apologized for causing trouble, as Japan thanked Iranian authorities.
Iranian officials on Saturday announced the release of Satoshi Nakamura, a 23-year-old tourist, who was seized in October in the southeast.
They did not say when and where he was freed, but Japanese press reports said he was found across the border in Pakistan.
The hostage’s father, Kiyotaka Nakamura, said he received a call from his son at 11:30pm on Saturday and spoke to him for three or four minutes.
“When I see him, I want to tell him, ‘You really hung in there,’” Nakamura, wearing a business suit, told reporters in the family’s hometown of Osaka in western Japan.
He said that his son’s voice sounded cheerful.
“I asked him, ‘Are you alright?’ He replied, ‘I’m alright both physically and mentally,’” Nakamura said.
“I felt relieved because what I heard was Satoshi’s voice just like I remembered it,” he said.
APOLOGY
“Please allow me to apologize for causing all the trouble and worries to you,” he said, referring to the public.
It is common in Japan to apologize for upsetting the social order.
Nakamura, a student at Yokohama National University, was abducted on Oct. 8 in a region bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan as he headed from his hotel for the ancient mud-built citadel of Bam in Kerman Province.
He had been traveling alone after teaching Japanese and English in Nepal with a volunteer group.
A SON FOR A SON
A bandit called Esmail Shahbakhsh, blamed for the kidnapping, had reportedly demanded the release of his arrested son in exchange for Nakamura, Iranian officials said.
Japan’s Kyodo News reported that Nakamura was freed on Saturday in Pakistan and was to be moved to Tehran yesterday under the custody of Iranian authorities.
In a report from Tehran, Kyodo said Nakamura had recently been kept at a local government facility in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan.
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