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Puntland leader sorry after
Germans released |
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BOSASSO,
Somalia(August 11,2008)
- The president of northern Somalia's breakaway Puntland
region apologised on Saturday to two German tourists who were freed
following two months being held hostage by pirates.
The pair looked ill and dishevelled after they were released by their
captors late on Friday. They repeatedly broke down in tears as they
sat alongside Puntland President Adde Muse at a news conference in
Bosasso.
"We are really sorry for what happened. We put a lot of effort
towards their release and I wish to thank everyone who helped,"
Muse told reporters.
"If any pirate is caught now he will be jailed for 20 years or
executed," he vowed.
The pair were hijacked off Yemen in June while sailing to Thailand.
The pirates ransacked their yacht and then took them to northern Somalia
by speedboat.
They were freed after a ransom was paid to the gang. An accomplice
of the pirates said the gunmen were paid $1 million.
The two were named by German news magazine Der Spiegel last month
as Juergen K. and Sabine M. They told the magazine, which managed
to contact them by telephone through an intermediary, that they were
beaten and given very little to eat.
A German foreign ministry spokesman said later on Saturday the two
were being cared for in the German embassy in Nairobi.
"They are showing the stresses and strains of captivity but are
in good shape considering the circumstances," the spokesman said
in a statement.
Juergen K., who was heavily bearded after the ordeal, was asked to
address the press after Muse spoke. But he could not, and the president
consoled him as he sobbed.
The release of the pair followed the freeing on Tuesday of two Italian
aid workers held hostage in the south since May.
Piracy has long been rife off the coast of anarchic Somalia.
But it has increased sharply since the start of last year, when the
country's weak interim government drove an Islamist movement out of
the capital Mogadishu.
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