HEADLINES:
R/€ Japanese engineer's abductors set demands
November 24, 2009 Edition 1
SANAA: The kidnappers of a Japanese engineer in Yemen have insisted on the release of a detained Islamist, and Japan's embassy said yesterday that the hostage remained in the hands of tribesmen and not al-Qaeda.
"The captors have stressed that they will not release their hostage, except in return for the release of a member of their tribe who is held by the authorities," mediator Mohammed Sawa said.
A security official said the Islamist was a "dangerous element who has fought in Iraq and Nahr el-Bared", a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and was "difficult to let free".
Hussein Abdullah Koub, 23, was jailed for a year by the US military in Iraq before moving to Lebanon, where he fought alongside Islamist militants against the Lebanese army in 2007, the official said. He was later arrested in Syria before being taken into custody upon his return to Yemen.
Mediators said last week that al-Qaeda militants had seized the hostage from his tribal kidnappers and moved him to an unknown location in the Maarib region of eastern Yemen. But the Japanese embassy yesterday said he remained held by tribesmen.
"He is still in the same place" and being held by the tribesmen, "not in the hands of al-Qaeda", said Aki Yami, a first secretary at the embassy in Sana'a.
A Yemeni official has also denied that al-Qaeda is holding the hostage, who was kidnapped near the capital on November 15. - Sapa-AFP
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