An elderly Perth doctor who was held hostage by al-Qaeda militants has given an insight into his health battles during his seven-year ordeal.
Dr Ken Elliot and his wife, Jocelyn Elliot, were snatched in West Africa where they had run a medical clinic for decades.
From the comfort of his Perth home, he spoke to the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent about his kidnapping.
”In all my medical career, I’d never seen a case of scurvy but I saw it then,” he said.
“And I really had a really bad scurvy.”
For many months while being held captive in Burkina Faso, the 89-year-old surgeon couldn’t walk.
“I think it was because I bled a lot into my muscles, into my tissues, my legs. I couldn’t straighten my legs out,” Elliot said.
“I couldn’t even crawl at one stage.”
The doctor and his wife Jocelyn spoke to Foreign Correspondent about the night they were kidnapped by al-Qaeda jihadists.
“They’d sort of make your head go down, and they took me across to where there was a waiting car on the other side of our wire fence and they bundled me across the top of the fence,” Ms Elliot said.
Her husband said they had no option but to go along with them.
The missionary couple had run a medical clinic helping the disadvantaged in the small West African nation for 44 years when they were snatched.
Ms Elliott was released after three weeks in 2016.
It wasn’t until last year that Dr Elliott was finally freed.
