Former hostage ‘spared after he recited verses from Quran’. Vienna: An Austrian man held hostage for five months in Yemen said he was kept in permanent darkness in a room too small to stand up in and was forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. At one point, Dominik Neubaur told Austrian magazine News, he was taken out for what he thought would be his execution — but believed he was spared after he recited verses from the Quran. “I heard a weapon being loaded and felt its muzzle on the back of my head,” he said his first interview...