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SANAA: A Japanese engineer kidnapped by tribesmen near the Yemeni capital on November 15 was released on Monday, Sanaa's governor Numan Duid announced.
"The hostage has been freed and is now with tribal chiefs who negotiated his release," Duid told reporters.
He said the release of the man, identified by Japanese media as 63-year-old Takeo Mashimo, followed a pledge by Yemeni authorities that the case of a member of the kidnappers' tribe held without charge would be examined.
As he got out of a vehicle that arrived in front of the Sanaa government building, Mashimo told a swarm of reporters that he was "fine". When asked what he wanted to do first, he said in images shown on Japanese television: "I want to see my wife."
At a press conference there, he said: "I'm relieved that I was freed unharmed. Thank you."
Talking to someone on a mobile phone at the same place, he said: "I'm all right. I want to take a shower as I didn't have one for nine days."
Sheikh Abdul Jalil, a tribal leader in Arhab, where the kidnapping took place, northeast of the capital, had mistakenly announced the engineer's release last Tuesday.
"The abductors had said they would free the hostage and had left to get him, but when they came back they said they had changed their mind," said Sheikh Jalil.
Tribal mediators had said the kidnappers were insisting on an exchange in which the detained Islamist member of their tribe would be freed.
A security official said the Islamist was a "dangerous element who has fought in Iraq and Nahr el-Bared", a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and was "difficult to let free".
Hussein Abdullah Koub, 23, was jailed for a year by the US military in Iraq, before moving to Lebanon where he fought alongside Islamist militants against the Lebanese army in 2007, the official said.
He was later arrested in Syria before being taken into custody upon his return to Yemen.
Mediators said last week that Al-Qaeda militants had seized the hostage from his tribal kidnappers and moved him to an unknown location in the Maarib region of eastern Yemen.
But the Japanese embassy said he had not changed hands or been moved. Mashimo is employed by a Tokyo-based consultancy working on the construction of an elementary school funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
Yemeni tribes often kidnap foreigners to put pressure on local authorities. More than 200 foreigners have been seized during the past 15 years, with most being freed unharmed.
But five Germans and a Briton, who were taken captive in June in the north of the country, are still missing and with no word on their fate.
They were among nine people seized in the Saada region, the stronghold of Shiite rebels at war with the Sanaa government. The three others in the group – two Germans and a South Korean – were killed.
Two Japanese women were released unharmed in May 2008 after briefly being taken hostage by Yemeni tribesmen.
- AFP/so
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