Posted on 05/15/2003 2:34:54 PM PDT by knighthawk
One of the freed tourists kidnapped in the Sahara desert said today that his captors had demanded money to buy weapons to overthrow the Algerian Government.
No one has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 32 European tourists in southern Algeria, 17 of whom were released yesterday. This led to a range of theories blaming Islamic extremists or smugglers that operate in border regions.
But Gerhard Wintersteller, a retired technician who led an eight-member group of tourists that went missing in late March, said that the kidnappers "told us they wanted to install an Islamic state in Algeria and overthrow the Government. They wanted ransom money - no political demands as far as I know. They wanted money to get weapons."
The Algerian Government had blamed an Islamist group called Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which is said to be linked to al-Qaeda and is a spin-off of the main militant group battling the Government.
Herr Wintersteller, 63, told Germany's RTL television: "Mujahidin told us that there were negotiations going on with our governments, and that it was only about ransom money.
"They prayed every day at the same hour, the same minute, and their Kalashnikovs were left lying in a pile. I only needed to grab one ... but I don't know how to use weapons."
But he refused to discuss how he was freed, for fear of jeopardising the safety of the 15 tourists still missing.
According to the Algerian newspaper El Watan, Algerian commandos freed the 17 tourists - ten Austrians, six Germans and a Swede - in a dawn raid on Tuesday, engaging in a pitched battle at a hideaway about 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) south of the capital, Algiers.
Algerian newspaper reports have indicated that officials know the whereabouts of the second group still in captivity, but there was no official word on the possibility of a raid. European governments have remained silent, citing concerns about the safety of the remaining hostages.
However, the Le Quotidien d'Oran newspaper quoted a desert guide in the Illizi region, near the Libyan border, where the second group is reportedly held, as saying that security forces had been reinforced in the area and an assault appeared imminent.
Few of the released hostages have spoken publicly about their ordeal, but the accounts emerging today gave conflicting versions of their release. Ulrich Hanel, one of the Germans held, appeared to confirm a battle. "I'm happy that we survived the firefight when we were freed," he said by telephone from his home in the southern town of Bad Staffelstein, but he refused to elaborate.
An official at the University of Bayreuth, where Melanie Simon, 25, another freed German studies, said that "it probably was not a planned attempt to free them, but rather the hostages seized an opportunity and fled into the arms of a military patrol."
Herr Wintersteller said his group was seized as he slowed to exchange greetings with a car carrying German tourists and travelling in the opposite direction. "As we stopped, eight terrorists jumped out and held their Kalashnikovs in front of us," he said. "We had to throw ourselves on the ground. They ripped the car keys out of our hands."
The group moved around constantly, with the captives forced on regular exhausting night marches, Herr Wintersteller said. "Our shoes were shredded and we were at the end of our physical strength," he said of the ever more frequent moves before his release.
Just damn...
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