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Yemeni mediators say 3 German hostages released

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-19 19:58

SAN'A, Yemen -- Kidnappers have released their three German hostages after the Yemeni government agreed to meet some of their conditions, including paying a ransom and releasing some tribesmen from prison, mediators said Friday.

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The Germans were due to arrive by late afternoon in the capital city of San'a, said Ahmed Ubad Sherif, one of the leading mediators from the Khawlan tribe.

Sherif said the Germans were being cared for by Sheik Abdel Qawi Ubad, the deputy governor of the Al-Dhala province in southern Yemen. The deputy governor is also a senior tribal member.

A second tribal official, who was also mediating, said the kidnappers released the hostages after the government agreed to their conditions to release some tribesmen in Yemeni prisons.

The mediator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said a ransom of 20 million Riyals ($100,000) was paid by the Yemeni government.

A Yemeni security official told The Associated Press that authorities were sending a team to the Al-Dhala province to take custody of the Germans. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

The three Germans, an aid worker based in Yemen and her visiting mother and father, were kidnapped Monday by Bani Dhabyan tribesmen in Dhamar province, located about 65 miles south of San'a.

The mediators had said the kidnappers' leader, Sheik Abed Rabbo Saleh al-Tam, had initially demanded the release of a cleric, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, jailed in the United States on terrorism charges.

Al-Moayad was sentenced in 2005 in New York to 75 years in prison for supporting terrorism. In October, an appeals court overturned his conviction and ordered a retrial because of inflammatory testimony about unrelated terrorism cases in his first trial.

The demand was in addition others by Sheik al-Tam for the release of his son and brother from Yemeni jails.

Al-Moayad was convicted of conspiring to support and attempting to support al-Qaida and the Palestinian extremist group Hamas.

He was lured to Germany by two FBI informants in 2003 and secretly recorded promising to funnel money to Hamas and al-Qaida. He also boasted that Osama bin Laden called him "my sheik." He was arrested by German police and sent to the United States.