11 Europeans Kidnapped In Egypt

Tourists And 8 Egyptians Seized By "Gangsters" In Desert Are Unharmed, Foreign Minister Says

(AP)  Kidnappers seized 11 European tourists and eight Egyptians during a Sahara desert safari to Gilf al-Kebir, a plateau famed for its prehistoric cave paintings. Egypt's foreign minister said Monday the tourists had been freed unharmed.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in New York that the group was captured by "gangsters." He did not say how he knew of their release, or whether a ransom was paid.

The five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian were seized Friday along with their Egyptian guides and drivers while camping near the Sudanese border, Egyptian Tourism Minister Zoheir Garana said. Government spokesman Magdi Rady said it was feared the kidnappers had taken the captives into Sudan.

Only a few intrepid visitors make the daunting trek of more than a week in 4X4s across the desert to the Gilf, which lies near Egypt's borders with Libya and Sudan beyond a vast plain of dunes known as the Great Sand Sea. It is one of the most arid places on Earth.

Gilf al-Kebir has become increasingly popular among adventure and eco-tourists drawn by the stark desert landscapes and the prehistoric paintings in caves that dot the plateau. They include the "Cave of the Swimmers," immortalized in the 1996 movie "The English Patient." The cave features 10,000-year-old paintings of people swimming, a hallmark of a time when scientists believe parts of the Sahara were covered by lakes and rivers.

The unpopulated region is a crossroads for ethnic African tribesmen - including smugglers - from Libya, Sudan and even Chad, further south. It borders Sudan's Darfur region, where raging conflicts have given rise to armed bandits who have become notorious for robberies and hijackings.

Rady said the abduction was not connected to Islamic militants, who have previously attacked tourists in southern Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. "This is a criminal act. They are seeking a ransom," he said.

Garana said the tour company that organized the trip negotiated with the kidnappers, who demanded up to $6 million in ransom. He said the German government was involved in the talks but the Egyptian government was not. Germany's Foreign Ministry said only that it had formed a "crisis team" on the abduction.

The kidnapping was only discovered because the Egyptian owner of the tour company, who was on the trip, was able to call his German wife by mobile phone, Garana told state television. The group included eight Egyptians, he said.

The tour owner told his wife that a group of armed men, who appeared "African," drove up to the group while they were setting up their tents, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media. It was not clear when that phone call took place.

Italy's Foreign Ministry said the owner called his wife in Cairo again on Monday night and told her their captors had taken the group to Sudan.

The kidnapped Italians included three women and two men from the Turin area, Italy's ANSA news agency said.

A tour guide who operates in the area said colleagues in the Western Desert told him the kidnappers were tribesmen. Mohammed Marzouk said there have been previous robberies in the area, most recently in May, when tribesmen seized two tour company SUVs during a desert trip.

Tourism is Egypt's biggest foreign currency earner. The industry was devastated in the 1990s when Islamic militants waged a campaign of violence, including attacks on tourists. The campaign was suppressed in a fierce crackdown by the government of President Hosni Mubarak and the industry has since been rebuilt.

Since 2004, attacks on foreigners shifted to the beach resorts of the Sinai peninsula in northeastern Egypt, with a total of 121 people, including tourists, killed in a series of bombings.

But there have been no major attacks in the capital, Cairo - home of the Pyramids - or the main antiquities sites in the south in more than a decade. There have been no known Islamic militant attacks in Egypt's Western Desert, where the Gilf al-Kabir is located.

The Gilf al-Kabir, some 550 miles southwest of Cairo, is one of the last frontiers in Egypt, explored by a few Egyptian and European expeditions in the early 20th Century. The Cave of the Swimmers was discovered in a niche in the cliff face in 1933 by Hungarian explorer Laslo Almasy. Since then, the Gilf has largely been ignored until it gained the recent notice of adventure travelers.

The Gilf is a giant limestone and sandstone plateau - bigger than Delaware or the island of Cyprus and nearly 300 meters (1,000 feet) high at some points. It is separated from the rest of Egypt by a vast sea of sand dunes.

The plateau is creased with wadis, or dry river valleys, producing dramatic landscapes of dunes washing up against high black cliff faces. The wadis are pockmarked with caves holding one of the richest troves of Neolithic cave art in Africa. Rock faces are covered with red and black paintings of lions, gazelles, bullocks, giraffes and people hunting, as well as silhouettes of hands. Tour guides still boast of discovering new cave paintings.

Tourists are required to get permits from the military to visit the site and must travel in tour groups with at least one security guard. The tour, done in desert 4X4s, can take more than 12 days.

But, as in other places, expanding adventure tourism may be moving closer to zones of instability. Earlier this year, the annual Dakar Rally through the Western Sahara was canceled because of al Qaeda threats of attacks.

[toolmangler-2009]

Posted by dogsoul at 04:11 PM : Sep 22, 2008




A Liberal these days is anybody that is not a Republican. I am not a liberal or a Repug, but I am more of a ''Dino'' than a ''Rino'' I am an oldtime Democrat. I am only against abortion when it is used as birth-control when the pill is available (Rape and incest excepted)

[displeased]

I took 10 of my high school students and two parents and we had a wonderful time.
Posted by lfnewby

I''m also planning a trip to Egypt to do some scuba diving in the Red Sea. I''ve read the people there are friendly and the crime rate is low. Some of you fear muslims and think they''re instructed to kill you. I find this fear silly since there are criminals in the USA who would kill you without hesitation. These kidnappers in Egypt are criminals. Criminals are all over the world. If they kidnap for a ransom, they won''t kidnap Americans. US doesn''t pay ransoms. Europeans do.

[caliengineer]

minnick8- I refuse to believe anyone who can spell is as idiotic as you. I accuse you of being a disinformation specialist of the NWO. If you are not, you should change jobs and at least be paid for leading the nation into immorality.

[caliengineer]

The worst insult for Muslims is to be called "monkey". Pig is second. After that, the Egyptians are looked down upon as the lowest of all mideast nations.

The "liberal" views espoused by the high school teacher below are only the neatly packaged stepping stones to the final objectives of the Illuminati: complete world power over a class of slaves without any rights.

Universal Healthcare is going to become MANDATORY healthcare including RFID chips, poisoned vaccinations, sterilizations. Keep marching to the drumbeat of those who see you as "unproductive eaters". Their plans go beyond Planned Parenthood in killing and reducing those they see as undesirable.

[lfnewby]

Many liberals are individuals who want to see the world become a better place -- a place where wealth is not the only guarantee of healthcare, a place where leadership is open to all races, genders and social classes, a place where the rich do not begrudge taxes that help those less fortunate, a place where true education erases ignorance and a place where progress does not destroy the environment. By the way, I just returned from a trip to Egypt this summer. I took 10 of my high school students and two parents and we had a wonderful time. We dressed appropriately and respected the local beliefs and EVERYONE treated us wonderfully. They frequently praised the US, even though they universally view Bush et al as pigs. (The worse insult for Muslims.)

[presjfk]

The Germans will negotiate and pay ransom to anyone. It makes them a great target.

[kommoncents-2009]

I''m sorry to have to say it, but if you go to these crazy muslim countries then you''re asking for it. It''s the sad state of world as it is today. Stay away from those psychos and you lower your chances of getting kidnapped or killed by those nuts.

[minnick8-2009]

modern day liberal & what they represent... sure, maybe you can see some lingering coorelations,

Dogsoul,

Did you read the end of my second blog? I wrote:

In other words freedom from a beleif in God, freedom to s c r e w and handle birth control with abortion, freedom to hold in sanctity the lives of criminals on death row, freedom to tax those who worked hard to earn their money under capitalism and spread the wealth around to the "underpriviledged."

That will do for starters.

[minnick8-2009]

little to paint their picture now.

Posted by dogsoul

The challenger, challenged a liberal definition without irrationality or emotion. I think I did it.

[dogsoul]

"Look up the subject in Google if you really want to know about liberalism"

You''re talking about the historical application of a term - but that''s fairly meaningless when it comes to the modern day liberal & what they represent... sure, maybe you can see some lingering coorelations, some sort of base from which the modern liberal may have morphed - but SO much of modern liberalism had its genesis during the 60''s thru today that such references do little to paint their picture now.

[ahhhhhhhaaaa]

Ok, I see that some of you people went FULL ***!!!!! on the issues at hand. You didn%u2019t even go half *** like you were supposed to but you had to go full ***!!!! . Doesn%u2019t anyone understand? We are living in biblical times people!!!!!!! WE OWE OTHER COUNTRIES SO MUCH MONEY, CAN YOU SAY ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT? COMING SOON TO A COUNTRY NEAR YOU!!!!!!!

[minnick8-2009]

The core of this movement, unlike the British tradition, was not so much a definite political doctrine as a general mental attitude, a demand for an emancipation from all prejudice and all beliefs which could not be rationally justified, and for an escape from the authority of ''priests and kings''. Its best expression is probably B. de Spinoza''s statement that ''he is a free man who lives according to the dictates of reason alone''.
Still from Hayak
_________________________________

In other words freedom from a beleif in God, freedom to s c r e w and handle birth control with abortion, freedom to hold in sanctity the lives of criminals on death row, freedom to tax those who worked hard to earn their money under capitalism and spread the wealth around to the "underpriviledged."

That will do for starters.

[minnick8-2009]

Liberalism

F. A. Hayek

Look up the subject in Google if you really want to know about liberalism. Here are a few ideas by F. A. Hayek:

The one tradition, much older than the name ''liberalism'', traces back to classical antiquity . . . took form during the late 17th & 18th centuries as the political doctrines of the English Whigs. Was model of most of the European nineteenth%u2011century liberalism followed. It . . . demanded a deliberate reconstruction of the whole of society in accordance with principles of reason. This approach derived from the new rationalist philosophy developed above all by Reni Descartes (but also by Thomas Hobbes in Britain) and gained its greatest influence in the eighteenth century through the philosophers of the French Enlightenment. Voltaire and J.%u2011J. Rousseau were the two most influential figures of the intellectual movement that culminated in the French Revolution and from which the Continental or constructivistic type of liberalism derives. More to follow

[dogsoul]

"Could one of the liberal-bashers please define liberal? Remember, a definition is rational not emotional. "

In the modern era, the term ''liberal'' holds some general characteristics found to a greater or lesser degree in those that espouse their core principles. Here are some key examples:

1 - a pervasive sense of anti establishmentism held as virtue unto itself, regardless of the merits of said establishment. This results in the often baffling bizzaro-world sort of mindset where all things even vaguely part of ''the establishment'' are not only rejected, but attacked with malice. Examples include America, Christianity, Judaism, Capitalism, Corporations, males, marriage, etc...

2 - Following point # 1, this leads the modern liberal to embrace & aid such things as socialism & communism as well as the rulers that promote this (Chavez & Castro)

3 - Following points 1 & 2 above. The modern liberal feels justified in engaging in things like censorship & the manipulation of facts as a righteous means toward whatever ends may be in fashion at the moment - debate & dialogue toward truth are not in their plans.

4 - the modern liberal has demonstrated in many ways that they would wholeheartedly endorse any defeat against the United States, including another successful terror attack, so long as it can be used as political leverage in the attainment of partisan control over governing bodies.

[minnick8-2009]

Why would any non Muslim person would even go into a Muslim Country when Jihad against all Christians has been declared.

What on earth could there possibly be in the Sahara desert that would make anyone expose themselves to the heat, sand storms, sand mites, and Muslim terrorists that would make it worth the risk of going there?

[minnick8-2009]

Posted by brdlikblssss

You stupid little twit. Get off this web site. There are only 10 million sites where you can peddle your wares (used ones at that). This one is for the disucssion of news, politics, and current events. You are none of the above.

[redbds]

Could one of the liberal-bashers please define liberal? Remember, a definition is rational not emotional.

Posted by CheeryBye at 01:22 PM : Sep 22, 2008

Good luck on this one.

[inketolstoy]

CheeryBye - WHich definition of liberal do you want? 19th century, early 20th century, or the current group that claims the name?

[johnpatrick9]

liberal: PROGRESSIVE/FORWARD THINKING/NON-RACIST/NOT INTO FEAR AND USE OF POLICE STATE COERCION TO FORCE UPON THE WORLD, AS THE REPUBLICANS DO, GREED AND POLITICAL DOMINATION. Liberals into EQUALITY AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE:FREE THINKERS AS OPPOSED TO RIGID, CORPORATE SERVING REPUBLICAN WEENIES.

[johnpatrick9]

God -using, hypocritical, warmongering, fascist, imperialistic haters of the American Republic: ALL OF THOSE TRAITOUROUS AMERICAN PHONIES WHO SUPPORT AND CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE STUPIDITY AND ARROGANCE OF THE NAZI REPUBLICAN IMPERIALIST PARTY. MAY HITLER WELCOME YOU WITH OPEN ARMS...IN HELL!

Liberals - weak, Godless, unAmerican traitors.... go to France where you belong.

Posted by dogsoul at 11:13 AM : Sep 22, 2008