Sahara hostage-taking in 2003

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The hostage-taking in the Sahara in 2003 was a kidnapping in which 32 European tourists were abducted in Algeria by the Salafist group GSPC . Some of the hostages lived the history of Germany (since 1990) | In captivity for 177 days until they were liberated. For Germany, the incident is considered to be the longest kidnapping in the history of the Federal Republic . According to the Algerian investigative authorities, the kidnapping was planned by the GSPC's vice-chief Amari Saifi .

Travel warnings

In November 2002, should Tuareg from the region armed Mujahideen on the graves slopes have seen, were probably arrived there in October and storage had built.

The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs issued travel advice on Algeria on December 5, 2002, according to which there was a massive risk of armed robbery in the hill country between the south of the country and the capital Algiers and the area around the Georges d'Arak between Tamanrasset and Insalah should only be passed through in a military convoy , although the south around Hoggar and Tassili seemed safe, even if only a local guide was to be used.

A Tuareg who saw the armed men on the burial ground reported this to the Algerian authorities a few weeks later in December. However, the report was not followed up and individual tourists were not informed about it. However, travel agencies have partially ceased their activities in the region.

According to information from the Frankfurter Rundschau on April 3, 2003, the grave piste was visited by around eight thousand tourists during the 2003/2004 holiday season.

Course of events

Hostage-taking

Landscape around the graveyard

On the night of February 22, 2003 were at the height of Oued Samene three German motorcycle -tourists shortly after 2:00 am about 30 with Kalashnikovs taken armed men from the north of Algeria in their camp in captivity. The kidnappers drove Toyota Land Cruiser HZJ75, which they had previously stolen from an oil company , one of which had a defective axle . The hostages were instructed to follow the pick-ups on their motorcycles and each had an armed kidnapper behind them. At around 5:15 a.m., two women and two men from Switzerland , who were traveling as tourists with a Toyota Hiace 4x4 on the grave road in the Sahara , were captured by the hostage takers. The cars were searched by the kidnappers and items found useful were retained, which is why the victims initially assumed a robbery and were only told the following day that it was a hostage-taking. The tourists' personal documents and technical devices were stolen. The women were given robes by the kidnappers and instructed to cover themselves with them.

On the same day, at sunset, the kidnappers took hostage another four men from Germany who were traveling as tourists on motorcycles in the desert and had set up camp there . The kidnappers sat as passengers on the men's motorcycles and forced them to follow the pick-ups that drove through the desert off the beaten track. Around midnight, one of the motorcyclists fell, sprained his shoulder and was no longer able to drive the motorcycle. It was therefore transported on in one of the other vehicles. The next day, the group drove into the Tassili n'Ajjer Mountains and over a slope that the kidnappers had built months earlier. On the way, the kidnappers buried mines they had built themselves . After two of the tourists' motorbikes broke while driving on unsuitable terrain, the tourists agreed with the kidnappers on February 25 to leave the two defective vehicles behind. They were supposed to be fetched later, but they didn't. During the night, the drive shafts of the Toyota Hiace also tore , whereupon it was camouflaged with stones, also left behind and the occupants were loaded into the pick-ups and the injured motorcyclist was forced to drive his motorcycle again, which up until then was on the roof of the bus had been transported. While the motorcyclists were able to interrupt the journey at night due to a risky slope, the pickup continued with the other prisoners until they reached the end of the runway around 6 a.m. on February 26, where they entered a ravine with their luggage had to go down.

On March 8, two men and two women were kidnapped between Illizi and Djanet , both of whom had been traveling with mobile homes , including a couple from Augsburg with a blue Iveco . Another four men and two women from Bavaria , including a man of Swedish nationality living in Bavaria , who were traveling between Tamanrasset and Bordj Omar Driss in a total of three SUVs , were reported missing from March 17.

On March 22nd, eight Austrians were captured who were traveling in four vehicles between Erg Tifferine and Tamanrasset . A total of 32 people had been captured in the region by April, including 16 Germans, ten Austrians, four Swiss, one Dutch and one Swede .

Some of the hostages were able to communicate with their kidnappers in French . According to the hostage testimony, these were "not really terrifying". They would have guarded the hostage but not threatened them, treated them with respect and allowed them to take pictures . The hostages' initial thoughts of fleeing were discarded because not all prisoners were able to do so, the situation was initially not perceived as life-threatening and an unnecessary risk was to be avoided.

Search for the abductees

Crisis team leader Jürgen Chrobog

The first kidnapped tour group was reported missing to the Algerian authorities on March 10, and the German embassy in Algiers was informed. After people were repeatedly reported missing, the Federal Foreign Office in Germany suspected in mid-March that it might be kidnappings. In April, the then Attorney General Kay Nehm carried out an investigation. The Foreign Office set up a crisis team that worked with the Federal Criminal Police Office , the Federal Intelligence Service and international partners in Algeria. The then State Secretary in the Foreign Office, Jürgen Chrobog , was appointed head of the crisis team.

On March 22nd, a search caravan was assembled by the Algerian armed forces . The Foreign Office issued a travel warning for the region on April 1 . Since the then Federal Prosecutor General Nehm assumed a terrorist background, he initiated a preliminary investigation on April 4. However, because the kidnappers did not contact the authorities and did not make any demands, the crisis team was initially unclear about the motive and the background to the crime. On April 7th, employees of the Federal Criminal Police Office , GSG 9 and the Cobra task force traveled to Algeria. The then German Interior Minister Otto Schily also arrived in the country the following day .

According to information that the then Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner announced on April 12th, a message was found from the missing persons, from which it emerged that they were still alive on April 8th.

A group of 15 of the kidnapped hostages was taken by the kidnappers to a mountain region and lived there hidden in a rocky gorge. German reconnaissance planes unsuccessfully searched the mountains for the missing persons with thermal imaging cameras . After helicopters had flown over the region, the kidnappers and hostages changed their whereabouts after 52 days under extreme heat conditions and water scarcity in order not to be discovered and from then on they hid in a cave. As the first success of the search, food residues and the Iveco of the kidnapped couple from Augsburg were found on April 20 , so that the search could be focused on a narrower region. In addition, it could be assumed that the abducted people were still alive and had been divided into two groups. The hostages learned through a radio provided by the kidnappers that the search for you was ongoing. However, it remained unclear to them whether negotiations between the kidnappers and the authorities were already underway.

The military search caravan was increased to 5,000 people by May 7th. Cooperation with the Algerian government under President Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika was described by Chrobog, among others, as difficult, as Algeria's foreign assistance was said not to have been desired and the foreign authorities were not allowed to search for the prisoners independently.

Contact and release of the first hostages

The hostage-takers were said to have proceeded without a well-thought-out plan and in an amateurish way and to have received no instructions from their leader. For example, they took the addresses of the embassies from the travel guide of one of the tourists in order to bring the letter of confession to the street, according to one of the hostages, and to hand it over to a truck driver with a request to forward it. The letter of confession reached the German embassy in Algiers at the beginning of May, which gave the crisis team information about the background to the crime for the first time around three months after the first kidnapping.

On May 12th, the kidnapping of another tourist from Germany became known. On the same day, the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer traveled to Algeria to consult with Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika. The following day, one of the two hostage groups, consisting of ten Austrians (including eight Salzburg and two Tyroleans ), six Germans and one Swede, was released through a rescue operation by the Algerian armed forces in the Tamelrik Mountains , according to the Algerian press , with nine out of ten hostage takers allegedly killed and there were said to have been several injured on the part of the military. However, there are suspicions that the hostages were released through negotiations between the Algerian government and the kidnappers. Algerian newspapers initially reported dead among the hostages, which was later denied. With the liberation action it became known that the GSPC was behind the act.

Jürgen Chrobog traveled to Algiers to pick up the liberated Germans. For the return transport, a Bundeswehr ambulance (see MedEvac ) had already been made available for a transport to Cologne Bonn weeks beforehand . The freed hostages with Austrian citizenship landed on May 14 at 19:55 in a Boeing 737 from Lauda Air in Salzburg . The then Austrian Federal President Thomas Klestil expressed his thanks to Bouteflika for the support and invited him to a state visit to Vienna. The group of tourists still held hostage learned of the liberation over the radio.

Route to Mali

After the first group of hostages had been freed, the other group of kidnappers left the mountains with their hostages and traveled east for several days and nights. The reason and destination of the trip was unclear to the hostages. There were several accidents on the way, including vehicles with several occupants overturning. An Algerian newspaper reported on June 3 that the people still held hostage had been divided into groups of three or four.

Due to a lack of water supplies were rationed to two liters per person per day. The 46-year-old from Augsburg and mother of two Manuela Spitzer suffered heat stroke , fell into a coma and died on June 28. Her corpse was buried with pimples in the spotlight during the night and the grave was only planted with some grass so that it could not be discovered from the air. The following day the group reached a water point. Meanwhile, the search for the group continued to focus on the mountainous region north of the escape route. Despite a clear view, the convoy remained undetected by the Algerian secret service during its route of about 2000 miles through the desert. Algerian media reported on July 17 that the Algerian armed forces had dropped leaflets assuring the kidnappers safe conduct. The information comes from Algerian military circles.

The group arrived in the West African state of Mali in July and drove there to the mountains in the north of the country, as German television reported on July 18. After the German authorities had learned of the arrival in Mali, Juergen Chrobog traveled on July 22, along with former German Ambassador to Mali Harro Adt in the capital Bamako to get together with the Malian government and the then President Amadou Toumani Toure on the other Advise procedure. This gave the German authorities free rein to act independently within the country to find a solution. A total of ten officials from the governments of Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands were in Mali on July 27 to work on a solution. A circulating message that the tourists should be released was denied on July 28 by the then Algerian Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni .

Negotiations and Liberation

Through contacts between the crisis team and the Tuareg , Adt was able to establish contact with the hostage takers. They demanded weapons, the release of political prisoners and a ransom of 4.6 million for each prisoner, and video footage at the end of July proved that the prisoners were still alive. The negotiations between the crisis team and the kidnappers, which lasted several weeks, took place in the Algerian-Malian border region through the intermediary Iyad Ag Ghali , a former leader of the Tuareg rebels. The leader of the hostage-takers Amari Saifi, known as Abderazak el Para , also included a German hostage with a knowledge of French in the negotiations.

On August 5, an Algerian newspaper reported that six of the prisoners were ill and in need of medical assistance, but that the kidnappers had refused to be released. On August 13, the kidnappers allowed the first delivery of medicines and food.

Chrobog traveled again to Bamako on August 14th. In mid-August, the "Konrad Adenauer" aircraft of the German Air Force was made available at Bamako airport to fly the hostages back to Germany. Chrobog returned to Bamako on August 17 after reports that the 14 remaining hostages had been released, which turned out to be a hoax.

The freed hostages were flown to Germany with the Konrad Adenauer .

On August 18, Touré finally announced the liberation of the 14 remaining hostages. The hostages themselves reported that their hostage-takers celebrated their success with joyful aerial shots after the negotiations were over. The hostages were then handed over to the Tuareg, driven in jeeps over sand tracks to the municipality of Gao , about 500 kilometers away , and from there flown by German plane to Bamako, where they arrived at night and personally from the Malian President Touré in the Palais de Koulouba , the seat of the President. From there, the group, consisting of nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutchman, left the country for Europe on August 20 at around 1:50 a.m. At 7:22 a.m. they landed in Cologne-Wahn and were received there by over a hundred journalists . The four Swiss Reto Walther, Marc Hedinger, Sybille Graf and Silja Stäheli were flown on to Zurich-Kloten on the same day and were received there by the then Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey .

Michaela Spitzer's grave was tracked down in the desert with the participation of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the body was exhumed, taken to Germany for an autopsy and then buried with the family.

The whereabouts of the hostage-takers is partly unclear. The Algerian government had initially stated that it did not want to pursue the hostage-takers. One of the masterminds, the Algerian Gharbia Amar, is said to have been arrested in Chad in 2004 , extradited to Algeria and sentenced to life imprisonment. Amari Saifi was also arrested in 2004, but had not yet been convicted according to a report from 2013. Other suspected kidnappers allegedly died in 2004 when they were discovered by the Algerian armed forces in the Algerian-Malian border area.

Amount of ransom and cost of exemption

The amount of the agreed ransom is kept secret by the German government. In front of the press, the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder declared “that there is no declaration by the Federal Government on such questions”. According to speculation, it should have been three to five million euros. According to the news magazine Focus , the total cost of the liberation campaign was around 20 million euros, of which, according to the federal government, 420,000 euros were incurred for flight costs.

After the hostage drama, the Federal Foreign Office demanded part of the costs from the freed hostages in autumn 2003. According to the former hostage Rainer Bracht, the hostages freed in May were each charged with 1,092 euros and each of those freed in August 2301 euros. The claim was justified with "considerable public and political expectations". Bracht criticized the fact that hostages abroad were treated differently than hostages at home and cited a case from Bremen in which the victim would not have had to bear any costs.

Movies

  • ZDF History : Kidnapped in the Desert , ZDF documentary 2017

literature

  • Reto Walther: In the hands of the Mujahideen: Diary of a Sahara hostage , 2009
  • Harald Ickler, Susanne Längfeld: Abducted in the desert , Bastei Lübbe Verlag, ISBN 3-404-61544-1 , 2003

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dominik Mai: The hostages want to meet for the anniversary. In: Augsburger Allgemeine . Retrieved February 3, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Reto Walther: In the power of the mujahideen, diary of a Sahara hostage . Friedrich Reinhardt Publishing House.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f A chronology. In: n-tv . August 20, 2003. Retrieved February 3, 2019 .
  4. ^ A b Sahara hostages: corpse of Michaela Spitzer transferred. In: Spiegel Online . August 29, 2003, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b c Sahara tourists: Kidnapped in the Sahara - A chronology. In: FAZ . August 18, 2003, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c Thomas Neuhold, Reiner Wandler: All ten Austrian hostages in Algeria free - derStandard.at. In: The Standard . May 14, 2003, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b c d Chronicle of the hostage drama in the Sahara. The hostage-taking in the Sahara ended after six months for the 14 tourists. A chronicle of the events. In: DW Online. August 20, 2003. Retrieved July 17, 2018 .
  8. ^ Frank Hauke, Arno Heißmeyer: Sahara: The price of freedom. After months, 14 tourists return to their homeland - for a ransom that nobody wants to have paid. In: FOCUS Magazin Online . Hubert Burda Media, August 25, 2003, accessed on March 22, 2012 .
  9. ↑ a b Wim Abbink: Epilogue of the Sahara drama. The news of the end of the six-month hostage drama in the Sahara has brought joy and relief. Your way home was again a test of patience. In: DW Online. August 19, 2003. Retrieved July 17, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Schlamp: Martyrdom in the desert. After 177 days of being held hostage in the scorching heat of the Sahara, 14 tourists are released for a large ransom. In: Spiegel Online. December 9, 2003, accessed July 17, 2018 .
  11. ↑ kidnappers of Swiss Sahara tourists convicted. In: Tages-Anzeiger . September 1, 2013, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Funeral private affair of the family. Sahara hostage is not publicly buried. In: RP Online . September 1, 2003, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  13. ↑ "We have never despaired". In: sueddeutsche.de . May 19, 2010, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Life imprisonment for kidnappers of Swiss tourists. In: Aargauer Zeitung . January 9, 2013, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Sahara hostages have to pay. After it became known in Berlin last week that the German Sahara hostages would have to share in the costs of their liberation and repatriation, the same solution was emerging in Switzerland. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung Online. October 5, 2003, accessed July 17, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Rescuing hostages cost a total of 20 million euros. Sahara hostages have to pay. In: Handelsblatt Online. October 20, 2003, accessed February 2, 2019 .