SANAA, Dec 31: A former German diplomat and his family who were taken hostage by Yemeni tribesmen this week were freed on Saturday after security forces laid siege to the kidnappers’ hideout.

Juergen Chrobog — a former ambassador and foreign ministry number two — and his wife and three sons were freed and their four captors arrested, the state news agency Saba reported, quoting a Yemeni official.

“After a siege of two days at the area where the hostages were detained, security forces, backed by army soldiers, seized the four hostage-takers. They will be questioned and referred to justice,” the agency said.

It said the family, which was seized on Wednesday, was freed with three Yemeni drivers in the small village of Al Saeed in the province of Shabwa and transported by helicopter to the port city of Aden.

In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the five were now ‘in the protection of the Yemeni authorities’.

Mr Steinmeier said the former hostages were relieved and had ‘withstood’ their ordeal well.

“But it does not mean that, despite apparently being treated fairly, the past days were not extremely taxing for them.”

The family was abducted from a restaurant on the road between the port city of Aden and Shabwa, which lies 480 kilometres east of the capital Sanaa.

Their release followed mediation efforts by a team made up of tribal chiefs and government representatives who negotiated with the hostage-takers.

It was the fourth abduction of foreign tourists in Yemen this year. Two Austrians were freed only last week after being held for three days.

Tribal chief Sheikh al Ahmar Ali al Aswad was said by tribal sources to have been holding the Germans as bargaining chips for the release of the five brothers he says were wrongly imprisoned by Yemeni authorities. —AFP