Saturday,
September 16, 2006
Hostage means Honored
Guest and Hospitality in
The
ANNOTICO Report
As
many as 325 people were kidnapped in
While
militants in places like Iraq hold and sometimes murder prisoners, Yemini tribes traditionally merely take hostages to
pressure the government for relatively simple demands, such as freeing clan
members from jail or improving roads, hospitals and schools.
The tribes have
been doing it for years, and they believe the traditions of Arab hospitality
dictate that their hostages be treated well.
"The hostages are honored guests, and we try to make sure they lack for
nothing,"
Accounts of
former detainees, tell of sightseeing trips, parting gifts of pendants, incense
or traditional curved daggers, wine served with dinner despite a ban on liquor
and afternoons spent shooting - a popular sport among tribesmen.
In one case, the
captors were so concerned his captivity be comfortable
that they tailed him to a supermarket to find out his food preferences and
bought the items he had shopped for before kidnapping him.
"It was the
month of Ramadan, so they weren't eating themselves, but they prepared typical
meals from the region - rice and chicken - for us," said one abductee "At first we had to eat with our
fingers, like they do, but later they gave us spoons."
He said the
tribesmen also took the group sightseeing, showing them archaeological sites
and ruins that the Frenchman believes had "never before been seen by
Westerners."
Where
do I sign up to be abducted??? :)
By
Donna Abu-Nasr
Associated
Press
September
16, 2006
AP
PHOTO: Italian tourist Enzo Bottillo speaks on the
phone as he holds hands with his girlfriend Patrizia Rossi in the Yemeni
capital San'a. Bottillo and
Rossi are two of the five Italian hostages who were freed after six days in
captivity. Rossi said that the hostages are treated well,
many have experienced fear and panic in their remote hideouts that are
bristling with weapons.
SAN`A,
Yemen (AP) - When a French hostage mentioned to Yemeni kidnappers this week
that he needed his blood pressure medication, they retrieved it for him.
The word
"hostage" these days conjures images of gaunt men and women pleading
for their lives, but captives in
While militants
in places like Iraq hold and sometimes murder prisoners, Yemini
tribes take hostages to pressure the government for relatively simple demands,
such as freeing clan members from jail or improving roads, hospitals and
schools.
The tribes have
been doing it for years, and they believe the traditions of Arab hospitality
dictate that their hostages be treated well.
"The four
French hostages are honored guests, and we try to make sure they lack for
nothing," said Almulla Zabara,
a leader in the Al-Abdullah tribe that seized the four men and their Yemeni
translator a week ago.
The abductors are
demanding the release of some fellow tribesmen imprisoned by the government of
this nation on the southwestern corner of the Saudi Arabian peninsula.
Although there
aren't any recent figures, according to government officials and media reports,
as many as 325 people were kidnapped in
Until 1998, all
the captives were released unharmed. But late that year, four tourists grabbed
in the first kidnapping by a Muslim extremist group rather than a tribe died
during a botched rescue attempt by Yemeni security forces.
Zabara's assertion that tribal
hostages are treated well is supported by the accounts of former detainees, who
tell of sightseeing trips, parting gifts of pendants, incense or traditional
curved daggers, wine served with dinner despite a ban on liquor and afternoons
spent shooting - a popular sport among tribesmen.
In one case, the
captors of American diplomat Haynes Mahoney were so concerned his captivity be comfortable that they tailed him to a supermarket to find
out his food preferences and bought the items he had shopped for before
kidnapping him in 1993.
Jean-Jack Abassin, a retired French nuclear engineer who was snatched
in 1996, described the conditions of the four days he spent as a hostage as
"very nice" and said he sent copies of pictures he took during
captivity to his kidnappers.
Abassin and his wife, Monique,
were on the final day of a two-week group tour when their group of 17 French
citizens was taken hostage by 15 tribesmen armed with Kalashnikov assault
rifles.
"It was the
month of Ramadan, so they weren't eating themselves, but they prepared typical
meals from the region - rice and chicken - for us," Abassin
told The Associated Press from his home in
He said the
tribesmen also took the group sightseeing, showing them archaeological sites
and ruins that the Frenchman believes had "never before been seen by
Westerners."
Patrizia Rossi,
one of four Italians kidnapped last January, told AP that when the group was
snatched, "We got into a panic with those machine guns pointed at
us."
"The
kidnappers did not speak any language we knew so we couldn't communicate,"
she said, speaking from her home in
But they felt
more at ease over the days as the tribesmen repeatedly reassured them that they
would be released, she added. The kidnappers were trying to secure the freedom
of jailed members of the al-Zaydi tribe, they told
the Italians.
The hostages were
given bread, rice, lamb and tea, and were even offered khat,
a leaf that is a mild stimulant chewed by many Yemenis every afternoon, Rossi
recalled. She said one kidnapper gave her a pendant as a gift.
Although hostages
have been treated well, some were terrified to be held in remote hideouts
filled with weapons.
Fabian Chrobog, who works at an investment firm in
In an account he
wrote for AP, Chrobog, the son of former German
Deputy Foreign Minister Juergen Chrobog,
said the tribesmen demanded the release of five jailed members of their clan.
"These men
weren't terrorists - they were goat herders and honey producers," he
wrote. "But even when they treat you nicely, when you're in an environment
with that many guns and 12-year-olds who carry
Kalashnikovs, you're not safe."
When the Chrobogs were released, the captors expected their five
fellow tribesmen to be freed. But they weren't, and the tribesmen who kidnapped
the four French tourists Sept. 10 are seeking the release of the same
prisoners.
Zabara insisted the Frenchmen
were safe and said his tribesmen would protect them if the government tried to
use force to free them.
Interior Minister
Rashad al-Eleimi said at a
news conference Saturday that the hostages were "in excellent health"
and that the government would use peaceful means to secure their release.
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