CAIRO, March 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Four Germans were kidnapped in southern Egypt by an Egyptian tour guide seeking to use them as bargaining chips in a child custody battle with his estranged German wife, interior ministry sources said Tuesday.
Police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Moussa Mohammed Sayyed Radi kidnapped the four Monday in an area south of the ancient city of Luxor. Officials said he was using a mobile phone to speak with authorities in Germany and refusing to speak with local police or German diplomats in Egypt, CNN reports.
Police initially told AFP the four had been freed unharmed in a village near Luxor and described all four as being women.
However, interior ministry sources in Egypt and the German foreign ministry in Berlin confirmed later on that all four hostages were men.
A ministry statement named those held as Marco Vidkind, Ralph Laver, Kristof Paning and Peter Nowotnick, the Washington Post reports.
The German foreign ministry neither confirmed nor denied the reasons given for the kidnapping.
Yet, police said the tour guide had kidnapped the Germans to exchange them with his children, who were living overseas with their German mother.
Police said Radi's wife had taken three of the four children to Germany after she was granted the right to decide where the children would live.
The hostages told German authorities they were in good condition but that Radi was armed with a handgun and some kind of explosive, said German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Michaelis in Berlin, the Post adds.
The police added that the kidnapper spoke to German police in Berlin, but they gave no details.
Interior ministry sources insisted the kidnapping was a "family affair with no political connection."
The Egyptian tourism industry suffered heavy revenue losses in the 1990s when alleged Islamists attacked foreign tourists as part of a violent campaign to topple the government and set up an Islamic state.
The campaign culminated in a massacre of more than 50 tourists near Luxor in November 1997. Since then, there have been no more such attacks.
According to the BBC, diplomatic sources said the German foreign ministry in Berlin had formed a special negotiating team to work for the hostages' release, and is currently working towards that goal.
