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Freed hostages in Germany
20/08/2003 09:08 - (SA)
Cologne - Fourteen European tourists arrived in Germany aboard a military plane on Wednesday, ending a six-month kidnapping ordeal at the hands of al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists based in Algeria.
The tourists - nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutch man - emerged from the Sahara Desert thin, dirty and many in ragged desert robes and turbans on Tuesday after Mali helped mediate their release.
Family members and friends were waiting to receive them at the Cologne-Bonn military airport. A Swiss military plane was waiting at the airport to take the Swiss tourists to Zurich for reunions there.
After being handed over to Malian officials late Monday, the hostages were taken under government escort 595km overland from the far northern desert town of Tessalit, after a government plane was grounded.
They arrived before sundown at Gao, where German military planes, one equipped with medical equipment, then flew them to the Malian capital Bamako, and on to Germany.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder welcomed their release on Tuesday, and urged action against the hostage-takers, believed to be members of an Algerian extremist group connected to al-Qaeda.
"After the happy ending, one must look to the future," Schroeder said. "It seems important to me that the kidnappers should not be allowed to escape unpunished."
Algeria has linked the kidnappers to the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, one of two main Islamic extremist movements involved in a more than decade-long uprising in Algeria.
Generally seen as the less bloody of the two movements, it is believed to have ties to al-Qaeda.
Mali officials said there were no plans to pursue the kidnappers.
"Since they turned the hostages over to us, we're not worried about that," said Gaoussou Drabo, Mali's communications minister.
Asked if Mali would grant asylum to the kidnappers, Drabo said, "We never grant asylum to people like that - they're not angels. They haven't asked us, and I doubt that they'll ask any other country for the right to asylum."
Even before nine Germans freed by suspected Islamic extremists in the Sahara desert headed home, some politicians insisted that they should help pay for their rescue by the German government.
The money concerns - and persistent reports of a ransom - mingled with joy about their release.
Some German lawmakers said tourists went at their own risk and should repay some of the costs of freeing them to the German government, which led the hostage negotiations and sent a plane to pick them up.
The ordeal began in mid-February, when kidnappers seized a total of 32 Europeans as they trekked through the Algerian desert on motorcycles and in four-by-four vehicles.
Algerian security forces freed 17 of the hostages in a raid on a desert hideout in May. The remaining captives were taken across the border into Mali by their captors.
One, a 45-year-old German woman with two children, died of heat stroke and was buried by her abductors in June.
- AP
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