A PUBLICAN abducted on a business visit to west Africa thanked the local police yesterday for freeing him from an armed gang.

THE Clare publican who was abducted by an armed gang in Sierra Leone returned to Parteen yesterday after his terrifying ordeal.

RESIDENTS of a village on the outskirts of Limerick were said to be flabbergasted yesterday on learning a local publican was at the centre of a West African gunpoint abduction in a scene straight out of a Frederick Forsythe novel.