Hostage is a new six-part documentary series made by the RTÉ Television Archive Unit. The series features six very different stories of Irish people who were kidnapped or taken hostage, either in Ireland or abroad. These dramatic stories are re-told through first hand accounts, archive and re-construction.
Two Irish nurses working with Concern, were kidnapped in 1988 by a liberation movement in Western Ethiopia. They endured a month as hostages, and a 600 mile journey to gain their freedom.
Almost a million people died in the Ethiopian famine of 1984 + 1985. Television pictures touched the hearts of many. Two Irish nurses, Fiona Quinn and Mary Coen, felt moved to offer their professional services. They travelled to remote Western Ethiopia in 1987, to work on a Concern project. In April 1988 they were taken hostage by a guerrilla army; the Oromo Liberation Front. And so began a long and gruelling march across the border into Sudan, where they were eventually released.
Fiona Quinn, originally from Kildare now living in Athlone, and Mary Coen from Co. Galway tell their own story, a story which above all is one of an enduring friendship.