Freed hostages reach France

Three French hostages kidnapped by Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen more than five months ago arrived in France late yesterday after be-ing freed, according to an AFP journalist.

The trio – two women and a man who have not yet been identified – touched down at a military aiport outside Paris. They were kidnapped on May 28 in Yemen’s Hadramawt province and were moved to several different hideouts in their months of captivity.

“We are very happy to go back to our families and to be finally free,” one of the hostages told reporters on arrival in Oman.

The trio arrived at Al-Seeb airbase near Muscat on an Omani military plane at around midday (0800 GMT), and gave a brief statement before boarding a French plane to Paris.

The former hostages were greeted at the military airbase by France’s ambassador to Oman, Malika Berak, who said the French citizens were healthy and thanked Sultan Qaboos for his efforts in securing their release.

The aid workers flew in from the Omani city of Salalah, about 1,000 kilometres south of the capital and near the border with Yemen, a tribal official involved in their release said.

The male hostage sported a beard and one of the women was wearing a long skirt while the other wore pants.

A Yemeni businessman, Ahmed ben Ferid al-Souraimeh, who was exiled to Oman in the 1990s and who worked for the hostages’ release, accompanied the French citizens on the plane.

Yesterday, a tribal source said that the hostages had travelled to Salalah by car from where they were being held in Yemen’s Shabwa province.

In a telephone interview after the aid workers boarded a plane to Paris, tribal chief Ali Abdel Salam said he had the task of ensuring all three hostages were driven safely from Al-Qaeda strongholds in Yemen’s lawless regions across the border to Oman. “I drove all three of them, one at a time, accompanied by my two brothers,” he said.

The process of releasing the captives held by Al-Qaeda since May 28 began last Tuesday and only ended when the last hostage was handed over to Omani officials on Saturday night.

The aid workers disappeared on May 28 and, according to a tribal source who helped arrange their freedom, were moved to several different hide-outs in their months of captivity.

They were kidnapped in Yemen’s Hadramawt province and remained captive in the town of Seyun, 600 kilometres east of Sanaa, for several weeks before being moved to a farm in Loder, an Al-Qaeda stronghold in the restive Abyan province.

But an increase in attacks by US drones on suspected Al-Qaeda targets forced the kidnappers to “relocate the hostages to Al-Kour,” a barren mountainous region that straddles Abyan and Shabwa provinces, the tribal source said.

Al-Kour has served as the hide-out for several top leader’s of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and was used by US cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed in a suspected US drone strike on September 30.