Why can’t these Wild Arabs leave civilized people alone??
From the Associated Press, here’s the latest…
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2005/12/28/ap2417581.html
Armed men kidnapped a German diplomat and his family touring the mountains of eastern Yemen on Wednesday and pressed the Yemeni government for the release of jailed members of their tribe, officials in both nations said.
The five missing Germans - identified by a spokesman for German’s Foreign Ministry as former Deputy Foreign Minister Juergen Chrobog, his wife and three children - were traveling as tourists in a two-car convoy when a group of gunmen surrounded their vehicles, forced them into the kidnappers’ cars and sped off, said government officials in Shabwa, the province where the incident occurred.
The German official spoke on customary condition of anonymity, and the Yemeni officials were not authorized to speak to the press. Members of the tribe involved in the kidnapping, who likewise refused to be named, also said a former German deputy foreign minister was among the captives.
The Germans are in good health and have not been threatened, said Nasser Ba’oum, the deputy governor of Shabwa, citing tribal elders who visited the family.
Dignitaries from other tribes are mediating with the kidnappers to win the Germans’ release, Ba’oum said.
The kidnappers were said to belong to the al-Abdullah bin Dahha tribe, a number of whose members were arrested two months ago after a clash with another tribe. The bin Dahha tribe has accused the government of favoring the other tribe.
The mountainous region on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali - the vast desert of northern Yemen and southeast Saudi Arabia - is frequented by tourists visiting Shabwa, the capital of the Kingdom of Hadhramout, dating to 1,000 B.C., and the ruins of other ancient towns along incense trade routes that once ran through southern Arabia.
Chrobog, 65, was deputy foreign minister in then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government, which left office in November, and previously served as Germany’s ambassador to the United States. He was on a private trip to Yemen at the invitation of the former Yemeni ambassador to Germany, German government officials said on condition of anonymity.
In 2003, Chrobog headed a crisis team that negotiated the release of 14 tourists, including nine Germans, who were kidnapped in the Sahara desert and freed six months later by their captors in Mali. His wife, Magda Gohar-Chrobog, is a translator and the daughter of an Egyptian writer.
Tribesmen frequently kidnap tourists in an attempt to force concessions from the government in Yemen, a poor, mountainous nation on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula where state control in outlying areas is shaky.
Hostages are usually released unharmed, but several were killed in 2000 when security forces carried out a botched raid to free them.
Ba’oum said his government has agreed to a request from the mediating tribal elders for time to negotiate peacefully. He did not comment on the bin Dahha tribe’s demand for the release of the arrested men, except to say that their trial had to proceed.
In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry referred to Chrobog only as missing, not as kidnapped.
Tribesmen in the mountains of central Yemen kidnapped two Austrians a week ago as they visited a site known as the Queen of Sheba’s throne. In that case kidnappers also demanded the release of arrested members of their tribe. The Austrians were freed unharmed after the government told the tribesmen it would look into their complaints.
Two Swiss tourists were kidnapped in the same area as the Austrians a month earlier but released two days later. They were grabbed by members of the al-Jizah tribe in an effort to win the release of one of the kidnappers’ brother, who had been arrested on charges of stealing a car.