Former Irish Examiner columnist abducted while travelling in Tanzania
A former columnist and author was abducted and threatened with death while travelling in Tanzania.
Dan MacCarthy was held hostage by five men in the "kidnappers' paradise" of Dar es Salaam on Thursday morning after a bogus taxi collected him to bring him to the airport after 5am.
Once in the car, large men got in and pinned his wrists to the seat. They told him they would kill him if he did not give them his money.
Mr MacCarthy had been travelling for two months across Africa before he was abducted. He was on the way to Malawi for a trek across the Kalahari when he was taken hostage.
A man on the street struck up a conversation with him as he was walking back to his hotel and said if he ever needed a taxi to give him a call.
Mr MacCarthy said he "made the mistake" of booking that taxi to the airport the following morning.
When his 'driver' arrived the next morning with another man also in the car, he explained that an extra driver was needed as Dar es Salaam can be "very dangerous at night". Mr MacCarthy was told that people "can get attacked and abducted".
“We drove about 100 meters, and he pulled into an alleyway and jumped out and three of his henchmen came in," Mr MacCarthy said.
“He said ‘hand over your phone and wallet, give me the code [to the cards] or we'll kill you'.
Mr MacCarthy gave him the codes and he jumped out to an ATM. In seven minutes, he took nine transactions of €150.
Surrounded by five men who had threatened to kill him, he was then forced to set up an account on the money transfer app Remitly — which he later learned has operations in Cork — to transfer more money to the criminals.
Ejecting him in a shantytown as light was breaking, he was handed his passport, €16 and bank cards and told to go to the airport.
Mr MacCarthy is now safely back in Ireland. He warned people travelling to Tanzania to avoid Dar es Salaam. Anyone planning on hiking Kilimanjaro can access it from other, safer places like the city of Arusha or Kilimanjaro Airport, he said.
“Dar es Salaam is a kidnappers' paradise,” Mr MacCarthy said. "There’s a motorway to the airport and they're hunting cars up and down that motorway, hunting tourists.
The Irish Embassy in Tanzania and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade were hugely helpful to him, he said.
Dar es Salaam, where Mr McCarthy was abducted, is the commercial capital and largest city in Tanzania.
With a population of more than seven million people, it is the largest city by population in East Africa and the fifth-largest in Africa.
Mr MacCarthy, who is from West Cork, wrote a popular column on the islands of Ireland for the . He also wrote about hillwalking, mountaineering and cycling for the Irish Examiner and he worked as a subeditor for the publication.
His book, helped readers find new cycling routes through Munster.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has been contacted for comment.
