Yemeni gunmen kidnap ex-German diplomat
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-29 09:05

Armed men kidnapped a former German diplomat and his family touring the mountains of eastern Yemen on Wednesday and pressed the Yemeni government for the release of jailed members of their tribe, officials in both nations said.

The five missing Germans — identified by a spokesman for Germany's Foreign Ministry as former Deputy Foreign Minister Juergen Chrobog, his wife and three children — were traveling as tourists in a two-car convoy when a group of gunmen surrounded their vehicles, forced them into the kidnappers' cars and sped off, said government officials in Shabwa, the province where the incident occurred.

The German official spoke on customary condition of anonymity, and the Yemeni officials were not authorized to speak to the press. Members of the tribe involved in the kidnapping, who likewise refused to be named, also said a former German deputy foreign minister was among the captives.

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. Negotiations are under way to win their release, Ba'oum said.

Juergen Chrobog, German Deputy Foreign Secretary, who helped to negotiate the release of the 14 hostages that arrived from Mali at the military airport in Cologne, western Germany, on Aug. 20, 2003, speaks with journalists. [AP/file]

The kidnappers were said to belong to the al-Abdullah bin Dahha tribe, a number of whose members were arrested two months ago after a clash with another tribe. Ba'oum did not comment on the tribe's demand for the release of the arrested men, except to say that their trial had to proceed.

The mountainous region on the edge of the Rub' al-Khali — the vast desert of northern Yemen and southeast Saudi Arabia — is frequented by tourists visiting Shabwa, the capital of the Kingdom of Hadhramout, dating to 1,000 B.C., and the ruins of other ancient towns along incense trade routes that once ran through southern Arabia.

Chrobog, 65, was deputy foreign minister in then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, which left office in November, and served as Germany's ambassador to the United States from 1995 to 2001 . He was on a private trip to Yemen at the invitation of the former Yemeni ambassador to Germany, German government officials said on condition of anonymity.

In 2003, Chrobog headed a crisis team that negotiated the release of 14 tourists who were kidnapped in the Sahara desert. His wife, Magda Gohar-Chrobog, is a translator and the daughter of an Egyptian writer.

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.

Hostages are usually released unharmed — as was the case for two Germans and two Swiss kidnapped separately in recent weeks — but several were killed in 2000 when security forces carried out a botched raid to free them.

In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry referred to Chrobog only as missing, not as kidnapped.