One German expert kidnapped in Yemen

Six gunmen on Wednesday evening kidnapped a German expert working for " Sebestel Yemen" company for GSM telecommunications. A private sector company, including Lebanese businessmen, in the downtown of the capital Sanaa.

Yemeni security sources in Sanaa said that the kidnappers intercepted the car of the German expert at " Baghdad street" while returning back to his office and forced him under weapons threats to leave his car and to go with them in a car which does not have a traffic plate.

The sources said that the guards of a high ranking Yemeni official saw the kidnapping operation incidentally and exchanged fire with the kidnappers, but the kidnappers succeeded in reaching another car waiting for them at one of the main crossroad and were able to flee away.

Then a state of alert was declared and 400 soldiers besieged the entrances of Sanaa but so far nobody was arrested and the Yemeni security forces still continue to know the identity of the kidnappers.

This is, however, the second kidnapping operation for a German citizen in the downtown of Sanaa after kidnapping the commercial attach? at the German embassy in Sanaa last year. The attach? was released just 2 months after his kidnapping.

The new kidnapping operation, however, is an embarrassment for the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and for his government, especially as the kidnapping operations started to concentrate on German citizens. This operation is also being held in a bad time, as President Saleh will visit Germany after his visit to the USA and Holland before he will conclude his tour in France.