Sana, Yemen – 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 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 to win their release are underway, he said.
The kidnappers were said to belong to the 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.
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.
