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Kidnapped tourists back in Sudan
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Sep 28, 2008 - 6:13:19 AM

Kidnapped tourists back in Sudan

2 hours ago

KHARTOUM (AFP) — Bandits who kidnapped 19 tourists and Egyptians in the desert nine days ago have taken their hostages back to Sudan but are now heading towards Egypt, Sudanese officials said on Sunday.

"Security organs on Saturday detected the return of the kidnappers... with their hostages into the Sudanese borders," said Ali Yousuf, director of protocol at the foreign ministry, the official news agency SUNA reported.

However, he added that the group now appears to be moving from Sudan towards "the Egyptian borders."

"It seems that all the hostages are well," he added.

The hostages are 11 tourists -- five Italians, five Germans, and one Romanian -- plus eight Egyptians -- two guides, four drivers, a guard and the organiser of the tour group.

An Egyptian security official told AFP that the kidnappers and German negotiators had agreed to a deal but that "negotiations were still ongoing to work out details."

The kidnappers have demanded that Germany take charge of payment of a six-million-euro (8.8-million-dollar) ransom, an Egyptian security official told AFP on Thursday.

They also want the ransom to be handed over to the German wife of the tour organiser.

The independent Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Yom quoted an anonymous German official on Sunday as saying negotiations between German negotiators and the kidnappers had ended with the bandits' agreement to release the hostages soon.

An official at the German embassy in Cairo declined to comment. Germany has kept quiet about its role in any negotiations, saying only that it has set up a crisis team.

The group, seized by gunmen in southern Egypt while on a safari, was moved across the border to Sudan to the remote mountain region of Jebel Uweinat, a 1,900-metre-high (6,200-foot-high) plateau roughly 30 kilometres (20 miles) in diameter that straddles the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

On Thursday the kidnappers were reported to have moved some 13 to 15 kilometres (eight to nine miles) across the border into Libya, although officials there later denied this had happened.

There are conflicting reports about the nationality of the hostage-takers, with different sources saying they were from Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Chad or even Djibouti.

The area of the kidnapping is a desert plateau famous for prehistoric cave paintings, including the "Cave of the Swimmers" featured in the 1996 film "The English Patient."

One travel agent told AFP that in January a German group was attacked and robbed in the same area. They were abandoned in the desert with nothing but a satellite telephone. It is not known who carried out that attack.

Kidnappings of foreigners are extremely rare in Egypt, although in 2001 an armed Egyptian held four German tourists hostage for three days in Luxor, demanding that his estranged wife bring his two sons back from Germany. He freed the hostages unharmed.

Bomb attacks aimed at foreigners have been more common, with the most recent occurring between 2004 and 2006 in popular Red Sea resorts, killing dozens.