The fate of the two Cuban doctors kidnapped in Mandera, Kenya on the border with Somalia, on 12 April 2019 by a commando who later turned out to be part of the jihadist cell of Al Shabaab, is a mystery.
Yesterday morning, Wednesday 7 October, the press agency Associated Press, quoting Somali intelligence sources and also a statement by the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, announced the release of Assel Herrera Correa and Landy Rodriguez Hernandez, the two medical specialists no longer known, but whose existence had been assured by Somali terrorists, sending the evidence in a video delivered to the authorities of their country.
In the evening, however, the spokesman for the Cuban government, Juan Antonio Fernandez, denied that the two countrymen had been released.
"Fernandez wrote on the Foreign Ministry's Twitter profile, "Considerable efforts are being made to bring the two countrymen back to freedom and to their homes, but the news of their release circulated in the media today is not true.
In addition to AP, many Kenyan newspapers have reported the news of their liberation, as well as the BBC and other African and international media. The debate that was emerging was focused on the ransom demands and the possible payment by Havana for the release of the two doctors. It is perhaps around these fundamental details that the mystery revolves: Herrera and Rodriguez may have been detained, although in a safe place with their captors ready to hand them over to the Somali secret services, but perhaps not all the formalities to hand them over to the Kenyan authorities in Nairobi and have them repatriated.
For its part, the Government of Kenya has declared, through official spokesman Cyrus Oguna, that it is completely unaware of the matter. Even in Nairobi, there are no reports that the two health workers who were part of the group of 100 Cuban doctors who arrived in 2019 under an agreement between the two countries have been released.