World

'Always Giving Us Hope': Friends, Family Remember Murdered Hostage

By Nathan Rott

Published December 6, 2014 at 4:13 PM CST

Luke Somers, 33, an American photojournalist who was kidnapped more than a year ago by al-Qaida, photographs a demonstration in Yemen in 2013. Somers and a South African teacher held by al-Qaida militants in Yemen were killed Saturday during a U.S.-led rescue attempt, a raid President Obama said he ordered because of an "imminent danger" to the reporter.

American photojournalist Luke Somers, who was killed by al-Qaida militants in Yemen on Saturday, was described by those who knew him as passionate, inspiring and committed to the Yemeni people.

Somers had been held captive for more than a year. He died during a U.S. special forces rescue attempt, along with a South African teacher who was also held hostage by the militants.

Somers was born in England and raised in the U.S., and he was always struck with a bit of wanderlust.

"Luke was the friend that you had in high school or college that you would find kind of inspiring," says Shawn Gillen, who taught him at Beloit College in Wisconsin, "because he was willing to go the distance."

Somers worked as a salmon fisherman in the Arctic, lived in Jamaica and spent time in Egypt before moving to Yemen full-time in 2011. It was there that he took a hobby of photography and turned it into a career.

Tik Root, a freelance journalist who worked in Yemen at the same time as Somers, calls him "an extraordinarily passionate and thoughtful person."

"I think what really shone through was his love of Yemen and the Yemeni people," Root says. "He sort of felt at home there, it almost seemed to me."

Somers' sister, Lucy Somers, who still lives in the U.K., alluded to that comfort in a video she put out last week, pleading with al-Qaida militants to spare her brother's life, just days after U.S. special forces' first attempted to rescue him.

"When foreign nationals were advised to leave Yemen," she says, "Luke refused to go, saying he felt safe and at home there."

He also had friends there, including Fuad al Kadas, who spoke to NPR from Sanaa, the nation's capital. "He's different than the other journalists," Kadas says. "He makes friends, Yemeni friends, local friends. He [was] always giving us hope that things in Yemen will be good."

Kadas says that Somers was living with him before he was kidnapped in 2013. Ever since, when he goes out, friends ask about him — "Any news about Luke?"

"Every day they ask about him," Kadas says.

With Saturday's news, Kadas says, some were overwhelmed. "My dad couldn't speak," Kadas says. "My dad couldn't speak today."

Somers was 33 years old.