Former Nicaraguan Rebels Release Election Observer American Woman And Driver Had Been Kidnapped Friday

Former Nicaraguan rebels released a kidnapped American election observer Saturday in jungle-covered northeastern Nicaragua, a government official said.

Cynthia Gersony, 41, of New York City “has been freed by the rearmed Contra group that kidnapped her yesterday near the Honduran border,” said government spokesman Emigdio Quintero.

Some former members of the Contra group, which waged an insurgency against the leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s, have resurfaced in armed gangs in northern Nicaragua. Police recently began a sweep in the region to end the banditry.

Gersony and driver Roberto Moncada were abducted Friday outside the jungle village of Somutigny, near the Honduran border.

Quintero said Gersony was freed unharmed after a special team negotiated with the abductors. Nicaraguan officials said the army and police were asked not to intervene. It wasn’t immediately clear if Moncada had also been released.

Gersony was expected to reach the town of Wiwili, some 240 miles northeast of Managua, late Saturday night before traveling to the northern town of Jinotega, to rejoin her husband, said Quintero, a spokemsman for the Social Welfare Ministry.

“Details of her liberation and what agreements were reached in this case will be made public” at a later news conference, said Quintero, declining to elaborate.

In a letter to Nicaraguan authorities shortly after the abduction, the kidnappers demanded two more voter registration stations in the area, inhabited mostly by English-speaking Miskito Indians.

Gersony and her husband, Robert, were accredited as observers for the Oct. 20 general elections.

Robert Gersony called Cynthia’s mother, Emily Davis of Sarasota, Fla., with news of the release about 8:30 p.m. EDT, Mrs. Davis said.

“We heard that the people that went up there to get her, got her, and phoned her husband from their car,” Mrs. Davis said. “She’s now in the car with these four guys from the (U.S.) Embassy.”

Mrs. Davis said she and her husband, Louis, were thrilled. “You can just imagine how you’d feel if it were your daughter. … We haven’t had much sleep.”

Even before the release, Louis Davis said he was confident she would be freed because she knew her abductors.

“They know all the people who are holding them, they know them personally. They had been there before and both are very well known throughout the countryside,” he said.

Louis Davis said the couple previously worked in Nicaragua on a reforestation project.

The Gersonys are independent contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development and have worked for the agency all over the world.

The OAS is monitoring the election and enforced a 1990 peace accord that ended the U.S.-supported Contra war against the leftist Sandinista regime.

Nicaraguan Social Welfare Minister William Baez said Cynthia Gersony had been warned by Nicaraguan Supreme Electoral Council officials not to venture into the area, which is considered dangerous because of banditry by former Contra rebels.

The leftist Sandinistas ruled for a decade until 1990, when President Violeta Chamorro displaced them in elections she won by a landslide. The Contra war, which claimed thousands of lives, ended soon after.

In the October elections, people will vote for a president, a national legislature and mayors nationwide.