This is the place in Karnak where German hostages were kept for three days by an Egyptian tour guide seeking a meeting with his two children.
PHOTO – REUTERS
Christoph Paning, Marco Wedekind, Ralf Laue and Peter Nowotnick were abducted Monday last week by an Egyptian tour company employee who sought to use them as pawns in a child custody battle with his estranged German wife.
Airport sources said the four men, accompanied by a state security team, landed in a private plane at Cairo international airport and were whisked away to an undisclosed location, apparently for questioning by security officials.
In Berlin, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Michaelis said they would travel on to Germany later. „The hostage-taker in Luxor surrendered to Egyptian police just before 2 a.m. German time Thursday morning and released his four German hostages,“ he said. „The government expresses its thanks to the Egyptian government, which with its prudent actions helped secure the unscathed release of the German hostages,“ Michaelis said.
Security sources said the kidnapper surrendered to police without a struggle and was taken into custody. The kidnapper, identified as Ibrahim Ali, 45, was trying to force the return of his two children from Germany. He kept the hostages in his apartment in the village of Karnak, near Luxor.
Police sealed off the apartment after the hostages left and guarded the dilapidated concrete house. Ali‘s landlady, Negah Kamel Ahmed, described the kidnapper as a private man who kept to himself. Ali said by telephone on Wednesday that his wife Heike Ritter had called him from Germany that day to tell him she was planning to fly to Egypt with their two children, but gave no details.
He said earlier that he had tried repeatedly to get a visa to visit his children Kerim, seven, and Rami, three, but had been told that his wife, who won temporary custody from a German court in January, would have to write inviting him to come.
„I don‘t object to the mother‘s custody of the children, I object to a German court deciding the fate of Egyptian children,“ the exhausted man said angrily. „The authorities were afraid I would take the children back to Egypt and keep them there, but all I wanted was access to my children. After all these rejections, I have no choice but to demand nothing less than their return.“
There was no word on whether Egyptian negotiators had struck a deal with Ali or what charges he would face.
Reuters
