Americans freed in Sinai region

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Cairo - Two American tourists abducted in Egypt's mountainous Sinai region were freed on Monday after three days in captivity, the local head of state security said.  

Egyptian authorities had sought help from local tribal leaders to mediate with a Bedouin tribesman who kidnapped the US pastor, an American woman and their Egyptian tour guide on Friday to protest at the jailing of his uncle on drug charges.  

The tourists were released "after successful negotiations with the mediation of sheikhs and senior tribal figures", northern Sinai's head of security, Ahmed Bakr, told reporters.  

The tourists were taken to state security headquarters in Al-Arish, the main town in northern Sinai, said Bakr, who did not give details of the agreement that led to their release.  

The isolated Sinai fell deeper into lawlessness after an uprising overthrew Egypt's autocratic president in 2011.  

Bedouin have attacked police stations, blocked access to towns and occasionally taken hostages to show their discontent with what they see as their poor treatment by Cairo and to press for the release of jailed kinsmen.  

Two American women were kidnapped in Sinai in February but Egyptian authorities negotiated their release a few hours later. The incident was repeated in late May with two other US tourists, who were also freed a day later.  

Michel Louis, 61, the pastor of a predominantly Haitian-American church in Massachusetts, was travelling to Israel on an annual trip to retrace the steps of Jesus when his tour bus was ambushed by Bedouin tribesmen in central Sinai on Friday.  

A security source named the leader of the kidnapping as Germy Abu Masouh, a member of a prominent family within the Tarabin, the biggest Sinai Bedouin tribe in Egypt.  

Abu Masouh tied the release of the hostages to that of his uncle, jailed in Alexandria after being found guilty of handling half a ton of drugs, the source said.  

A spokesperson for the US State Department said before the Americans were freed that it was in "close contact with Egyptian authorities who are doing everything they can to bring about their safe release". - Reuters



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