Six Americans who strayed into Mozambique and were arrested at gunpoint chartered an aircraft to fly them back to neighboring Malawi Tuesday to resume their medical missionary work after the Mozambican government released them without charge, officials said.
"They have unanimously decided they wanted to continue their medical mission. We expect they will charter a flight and leave this afternoon," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Cynthia Efrid said.A Briton and a South African of the South African-based anti-communist religious group Frontline Fellowship, captured with the Americans last Tuesday, were released by the government Monday, and supporters in South Africa expected them to return home Tuesday.
Sources in Maputo disputed allegations by Frontline Fellowship Director Peter Hammond, 29, a British citizen, that the foreigners were taken at gunpoint across the border.
According to the Americans, they stopped at an unidentified military installation in the northwestern Mozambican province of Tete in the mistaken belief that they had reached a border checkpoint, the sources said.
When they refused to get out of their vehicle after being informed they had entered the country illegally, armed soldiers surrounded them, the sources said, adding the group had carried no maps of the area.