SANA’A: A Dutch couple kidnapped in Yemen six months ago have been freed in the capital Sana’a, the two countries announced yesterday.
The couple, in good health, will be flown back home today, they said, without giving details on the abductors or how the pair’s release was secured. “Dutch journalist Judith Spiegel and her partner Boudewijn Berendsen, abducted since June 8, have been freed,” a security official said, quoted by Yemen’s state news agency Saba.
“The kidnappers freed the Dutch couple in an area near the embassy of the Netherlands and they are in a good health condition,” Saba reported, without giving details. The Dutch ambassador in Sanaa, Jeroen Verheul, wrote on Twitter: “Happy to confirm that Judith and Boudewijn have been released safe and sound.”
Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia hold dam talks
KHARTOUM: Water ministers from Addis Ababa, Cairo and Khartoum “successfully” held talks on an Ethiopian dam project, Sudan’s minister said, after Egypt’s objections delayed formation of a committee to implement expert advice.
“We have addressed a significant part of the issues on the follow-up of the implementation of the recommendations of the international panel of experts,” Sudan’s Water Resources and Electricity Minister, Muattaz Musa Abdallah Salim, said in a brief statement to reporters after the talks which lasted several hours.
Saudi, Pakistani beheaded
RIYADH: Saudi authorities yesterday beheaded a man convicted of incest in the south of the kingdom, the interior ministry said. Hasan Ghazwani, a Saudi national, was executed in the city of Jizan, the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.
It said Ghazwani’s affair had led to a pregnancy but did not disclose their family relationship or whether the woman had delivered. A Pakistani man was also executed yesterday for smuggling drugs into the kingdom, it said in a separate statement. He was executed in the capital Riyadh.
Suicide bomber kills 11 in Iraq
BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber killed 11 people and wounded 20 at a Shia funeral in a city northeast of Baghdad yesterday. The bombing took place in Baquba, 65km from the capital at a funeral for a group of Shia shepherds who had been killed by unidentified gunmen outside the city.Agencies
