Washington, May 25: Yemeni tribesmen released two kidnapped US citizens on Tuesday, one day after they were abducted near a remote tourist destination, a mediator said.
“The two Americans and their driver are now with me and we are in the mountainous area heading to Sanaa,” MP Mohammed Abdullah al-Qadi said.
“They are in good health,” he added.
“The release of the two Americans was due to pressures from Yemeni security authorities and after dignitaries of the tribe to which the kidnappers belong denounced the kidnap and ordered the release of the hostages,” Qadi said.
Security sources also confirmed the release.
Earlier Tuesday, negotiators had said negotiations were underway to release the two US nationals but reported difficulties in reaching the remote mountains where they were being held captive.
Mediators were having “difficulties in accessing the place in which (the Americans) are held because of its mountainous nature,” he said.
“The tight security measures taken by authorities to prevent the kidnappers from moving with their hostages” were also creating an additional obstacle in mediation efforts, he said.
Armed tribesmen seized the two Americans and their Yemeni driver in the hope of exchanging them for a jailed fellow tribesman, Hamid Abdullah Shirdah, who has been held in Sanaa’s central prison for three years on criminal charges.
It was not clear whether the release was a result of a deal reached between Yemeni authorities and the tribesmen.
The American pair was snatched near the village of Hajara, which is famed for its historic mountaintop buildings, west of the Yemeni capital, a tribal source said on Monday.
From there, the abductors from the Al-Hima tribe drove them to Hamra village, a man who identified himself as the captured Yemeni driver, Ali al-Arashi, said when reached on his mobile telephone.
Police had deployed in force around the area and set up roadblocks.
Yemen’s powerful tribes often kidnap foreigners for use as bargaining chips in disputes with the central government. Of about 200 foreigners seized in Yemen over the past decade, almost all have been released unharmed.
Two Chinese oil workers abducted by tribesmen in eastern Yemen were released on May 18 after two days in captivity.
—Agencies