Thanks to excellent police work:Kidnapped Basma is returned safely to her parents [Archives:2006/925/Reportage]

By: Hassan M. Al-Haifi

For Mr. Abdullah Ibrahim Ibn Mohammed (retired Yemeni diplomat), it should have been a routine Saturday on the 18th of February 2006. It started off around 7:30 AM with him taking his youngest child, Basma (7 years old) to the Al-Amjad Elementary School on Airport Road in Al-Jiraf (5 km north of the center of Sana'a City, also 3.5 km south of Abdullah's house).

As he was driving on a dirt road westwards from his home in the heart of Rawdha Village to Airport Road, he was intercepted by a Toyota Hilux pickup truck, with four men in it. The men dressed in camouflage military outfits and armed approached Abdullah's car. “You are wanted to go to the home of the commander of the Central Security (which was also in Rawdha village)””.

Abdullah had initially taken them to be security men on patrol or on the lookout for smugglers or some other security work. He asked them the reason