Kidnappers in Yemen Recieve Second Promise to Release Imprisoned Tribesmen
Update: Two women killed and three children injured during shoot-out to free the hostages.
Yemeni security forces are holding all five suspects in the kidnapping of four Frenchmen earlier this month, the defence ministry’s 26 September newspaper said yesterday in its web edition.
The security forces also freed substitute hostages delivered to the kidnappers in return for the Frenchmen’s release, the paper said.
The five tribesmen were detained in the southern province of Shabwa and were now being questioned by investigators with a view to prosecution so that they “take their fair punishment,” it added.
Tribal sources said that six members of the Al-Abdullah bin Daham tribe were in custody.
Three of the kidnappers surrendered when the four Frenchmen were released on Monday and three other members of the tribe were detained in raids on Thursday and Friday, the sources said.
They were not immediately able to confirm that the two kidnappers still at large were among the three arrests.
A tribal notable who was involved in the negotiations for the release of the four French hostages said that the arrests had prompted exchanges of fire between tribesmen and the security forces in which two women were killed and three children wounded.
“The authorities reneged on their promises,” a source close to the hostage-takers complained.
The four Frenchmen were abducted on September 10 and released on September 25.
Their captors had been demanding the release of relatives held by the authorities. They previously briefly held a German family and accused the authorities of reneging on the agreement that paved the way for their release.
The four men were abducted on September 10 in the Haban district of Shabwa province, about 460 kilometres from Sana’a, by armed clansmen seeking to press Yemeni authorities to release five jailed fellow clan members.
They were freed Monday by their abductors, who belong to the Al Abdullah clan in the south-eastern Yemeni province of Shabwa, and were airlifted hours later to the capital Sana’a by a military helicopter.
Tribal sources said that Yemeni parliamentarians and tribal chieftains secured the hostages’ release after a deal was brokered with the kidnappers.
Under the deal, the abductors received promises from the government that five members of the Al Abdullah clan being held by authorities over a running vendetta with another clan would be released later this week.
A Yemeni Interior Ministry statement, however, said that police and army troops had also assisted in the men’s release but that ‘no force was used.’
Al Abdullah is the same clan that kidnapped and held a German diplomat, his wife and three sons and four Italian tourists for several days in December 2005.
