Security investigates French tourists’ kidnappers [Archives:2006/986/Front Page]

Amel Al-Ariqi
SANA'A, Oct. 1 ) Police began questioning five arrested tribesmen Friday about the kidnapping of four French tourists, a state-run web site reported Sunday.

Quoting a security source, the Defense Ministry's Sept. 26 newspaper reported yesterday in its web edition that an anti-terrorism unit is interrogating two of the arrested, who will be prosecuted, adding that two suspects remain at large.

At 5:30 p.m. Friday, security forces raided the Abdullah tribal settlement in Shabwa province, arresting five suspects but injuring a 2-year-old child and a 60-year-old woman, local reports confirmed. However, the security source denied that there were any victims during the raid.

The five tribesmen are accused of kidnapping the four Frenchmen Sept. 10. The tourists were released safely last Monday and airlifted from the kidnappers' hideout to Sana'a. They flew home Wednesday.

According to tribal sources, the tourists' release followed lengthy negotiations with the kidnappers, who sought the release of jailed relatives in Abyan governorate. A group of sheikhs and parliamentarians involved in the negotiations brokered an agreement between the kidnappers and the government to free the hostages safely.

Under the deal, the abductors received government promises that five jailed Abdullah tribe members being held by authorities in a running vendetta with another tribe will be transferred to a capital jail and released in late October after Ramadan.

Al-Ayyam newspaper reported that leading Abdullah tribesmen said that the military raid violates the agreement with the kidnappers in return for releasing the hostages.

Abdullah is the same tribe that kidnapped and held a German diplomat, his wife and three sons and four Italian tourists for several days in December 2005.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh previously has pledged to crack down on kidnapping, a tactic tribesmen frequently employ to win concessions from the government.

Scores of tourists and foreigners working in Yemen have been kidnapped within the past decade by tribesmen demanding better schools, roads and services or the release of prisoners. Most hostages have been released unharmed; however, three Britons and an Australian seized by Islamist militants were killed when security forces stormed their hideout in December 1998.
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