after more than one and a half years in captivity<\/a>\u00a0in West Papua, Indonesia.<\/p>\nThe armed faction of the West Papua National Liberation Army kidnapped Mehrtens in February 2023 after he landed a small commercial plane in a remote, mountainous area.<\/p>\n
This afternoon Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement he was able to share new details of Mehrtens’ release.<\/p>\n
“Mr Mehrtens’ release involved a wide range of people and organisations, and the New Zealand Government wishes to acknowledge the Papuan community figures, who with the help of the Indonesian Government, assisted in ensuring Phillip’s safe release.<\/p>\n
“We are also thankful to the Indonesian authorities in Timika for looking after Phillip yesterday. They enabled him to call his family and did all they could to ensure his comfort with food and water, a shower and a change of clothes.<\/p>\n
“Yesterday evening the Indonesian authorities flew Mr Mehrtens to Halim Airforce base in Jakarta, where he was met off the plane by New Zealand’s Ambassador to Indonesia Kevin Burnett.<\/p>\n
“Mr Mehrtens had a private reunion with his immediate family last night. After 600 days he also got to spend his first night sleeping in a bed.<\/p>\n
“He has this morning been checked by an Australian Embassy doctor and is in remarkably good shape given his long and arduous ordeal.”<\/p>\n
Peters repeated his earlier call to allow the family privacy as Mehrtens recovers.<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The family of freed New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens say they are “extremely grateful and relieved” he has been released and will soon be reunited with them. Local police announced on Saturday the New Zealand pilot had been freed\u00a0after more than one and a half years in captivity\u00a0in West Papua, Indonesia. The armed faction of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11498,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11496\/revisions\/11498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}