5 Germans kidnapped in Yemen's mountains
SANA, Yemen: Armed tribesmen kidnapped a German family touring the mountains of eastern Yemen on Wednesday to press the government for the release of jailed members of their tribe, Yemeni government officials said. Germany identified the family as a former diplomat, his wife and three children.
The five - identified by the German Foreign Ministry as former Deputy Foreign Minister Jürgen Chrobog, his wife and three children - were traveling in two cars when a group of gunmen surrounded their cars and forced them into the gunmen's vehicles and sped off, said government officials in Shabwa, the province where the kidnapping took place.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
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.
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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.
The 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 the government has agreed with a request from the mediating tribal elders for time to negotiate peacefully. He did not comment on the bin Dahha's demand for the release of the arrested men except to say that their trial had to proceed.
The mountainous region of Shabwa on the edge of the Rub' al-Khali - the vast desert of northern Yemen and southeast Saudi Arabia - is frequented by tourists visiting the historic capital of the Kingdom of Hadhramout in the 1st Millennium B.C. and the ruins of other ancient towns along the incense and spice trade routes that once ran through southern Arabia.
Chrobog, 65, was deputy foreign minister in then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government, which left office in November, and previously served as the German 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 the condition of anonymity.
In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry said the family, which had been touring Yemen since Dec. 24, had disappeared and it was not clear if they had been kidnapped.
The five were traveling as part of an organized trip to Yemen; the tour operator reported them missing.
