Diver's Parents Optomistic

Parents of a Cape Town man kidnapped in the Niger Delta are confident their son's navy training will guide the group through the ordeal.

Dan Laarman, 36, was one of 13 people - five foreign workers and eight Nigerians - abducted while on an oil industry supply vessel on Tuesday. A private security contractor in the region said the vessel, HD Blue Ocean, was attacked at the mouth of the Sambreiro River in the delta, home to Africa's biggest oil industry. Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said the Nigerian authorities had officially confirmed to South Africa's High Commissioner to Nigeria, Stix Sifingo, that two South Africans had been abducted.

"Sifingo and his consular officials will continue to do everything in their power, working with the Nigerian authorities and employer, to help find a speedy and amicable resolution to the matter," he said.

Laarman's parents, Will and Ingrid, said from their Cosmos home situated on the Hartbeespoort Dam near Pretoria that he was probably the ideal person to be in that situation. "He trained in the SA Navy for more than 10 years," Will Laarman said."With all his experience he would be calm and assess the situation. He will calm the other people down because he knows that if they panic something bad will happen."

The couple said they received a call on Wednesday from Laarman's girlfriend of 10 years, Michelle Smit. Ingrid Laarman said Dan had about nine years' experience as a freelance diver and had worked in the Gulf of Mexico, Puerto Rico and Gabon.

"Dan recently qualified as a nitrox diver, which allowed him to live in a pressurised cabin for about a month and dive deeper than 100m. He is aware of the dangers in this job, but not these kinds of dangers," she said.

Laarman was in Nigeria on a month-long contract with Hydrodive Nigeria to work on Chevron oil rigs. South African-born hostage negotiator, Mark Courtney, said kidnappings in the delta usually did not take less than 10 days to resolve, but the gunmen where not violent and chiefly interested in making money.Courtney is retained by Thomas A Clayton Consultants, the world's leading global risk and crisis management company headquartered in California.

"It's extremely difficult to find out who is holding the prisoners because they hide behind pseudonyms. It takes about a week to 10 days to find out which group you’re dealing with. The standard request is a billion naira (US$80 million), which is too much. No one ever pays that."

He said the gang that carries out the actual "snatch" would consist of about 10 to 30 armed men, but there could be as many as 100 men at the camp where they were held. "Thecamps are in the delta, the place is criss-crossed with rivers and streams."Courtney said it was seldom that situations in the delta went bad and the longest case he dealt with was 50 days.

Insecurity in the Niger Delta surged in early 2006 when militants, who say they are fighting for more local control of the impoverished region's oil wealth, started blowing up oil pipelines and kidnapping foreign workers and holding them for ransom.

(Reuters)