July 12, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 26, 1428

BERLIN, July 11: A German woman held hostage in Iraq since early February has been freed but her son remains in the hands of the kidnappers, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Wednesday.

“Hannelore Krause’s ordeal has come to an end after 155 days. We are relieved and share the joy of the family,” Steinmeier told reporters here.

But he added: “The dire uncertainty about her son, who is still in captivity, remains.”

Krause, 62, in an interview broadcast on Al Arabiya television on Wednesday urged Germany to heed the kidnappers’ call to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, saying her son’s life was at stake.

“I ask Germany to pull its troops out of Afghanistan. If it fails to do so, then my son will be slaughtered,” she said.

“I want to reassert to peaceful Muslims that Germans are present in land which is not their own.” Krause and her 20-year-old son Sinan were seized from her house in Baghdad on Feb 6.

Steinmeier said Krause was freed on Tuesday afternoon. He said the government was doing ‘everything in our power’ to ensure he was released unharmed.

Krause, who is married to an Iraqi doctor, Mohamed Al Tornachi, had settled in Iraq some 40 years ago and taken an Iraqi name, Um Mazin.

Their son worked at the Iraqi foreign ministry and married a few months before the kidnapping.—AFP