Italian Hostages Freed inYemen
The broader picture to this is very complex.
SANAA (Reuters) – Yemeni tribesmen released five Italians on Friday almost a week after seizing them to pressure the government to release jailed relatives.
Elated but exhausted, the hostages arrived in the capital Sanaa a few hours after leaving a hideout in a remote area of the mountainous, and largely lawless, Marib province.
“We lived in danger, they had guns aimed at our backs,” hostage Enzo Bottillo told Reuters through a translator. The kidnappers, from the Zaidi tribe, had threatened to kill the Italians if the government tried to release them by force.
“The situation was very difficult, it’s a difficult thing for anyone to go through,” added another female hostage.
They Italians are due to fly home Friday evening.
The kidnapping on Sunday was the fourth of Westerners in less than two months, and stoked fears of a return to the wave of abductions that swept Yemen several years ago.
Yemeni officials said the kidnappers had surrendered to the authorities after five days of negotiations backed by a huge security siege. A security source said counter-terrorism units were used in the operation and the police said they were still hunting two tribesmen linked to the kidnapping.
It was not clear if the government had agreed to some of the kidnappers’ demands, but previous negotiations with hostage takers in Yemen have often been resolved through compromise.
“We thought we were going to die. The last night was very tense. We were ordered at gunpoint to stay on the floor and remain silent,” hostage Piergiorgio Gamba, 51, was quoted by Italian news agency ANSA as saying.
Bottillo said the kidnappers had kept them in a small room with no toilet facilities. “We lived in isolation from the world,” he added.
Scores of tourists and foreigners working in Yemen have been kidnapped over the last decade by tribesmen demanding better schools, roads and services, or the release of jailed relatives but most hostages have been released unharmed.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has vowed to crack down on abductions, and vowed kidnappers will be prosecuted.
Yemen has put to death two convicted hostage-takers since Tuesday and a state-run Web site said the country had decided to execute all kidnappers of Westerners on death row to serve as a deterrent.
Impoverished Yemen hopes to boost its tourism, but attacks by al Qaeda-linked militants and kidnappings by disgruntled tribesmen have scared off many travellers.
The Italians were seized just a day after five German hostages were freed unharmed. In 2000 a Norwegian diplomat was killed in crossfire, and in 1998 four Westerners died during a botched army attempt to free them from Islamic militants.
