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For the first time, former hostage Amanda Lindhout has revealed who paid the bulk of her $1-million ransom nine years ago that got her released from her captors in Somalia.

It was Allan Markin, who, by coincidence, was receiving The Mustard Seed‘s Golden Dove Award, for “exceptional support for the most vulnerable in our community.”

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Lindhout, a former freelance journalist, who made international headlines after being kidnapped in Somalia on Aug. 23, 2008, was partway through her 45-minute speech to a crowd of 270 people at the Mustard Seed Street Ministry’s Diamond in the Rough fundraising gala, when she broke the secret long speculated about in Alberta.

“We were … taken to Kenya,” she said of the Nov. 25, 2009, date of her and Australian freelance photographer Nigel Brennan’s release from captivity.

“Our families were waiting for us, and I was reunited with my mom, which was really the moment that I had held out for so long, and I came to learn all the ways that my freedom had come to me,” she told the crowd, who scarcely breathed, let alone moved.