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No trace of kidnapped tourists in Iran
Police have yet to find any trace of three European tourists and an Iranian tour guide kidnapped last week on a bicycle tour in southeast Iran, a government official said Tuesday. The general director of the Sistan-Baluchestan governorâs office, Gholam-Reza Javdan, told the news service Kar that the one Irish and two German tourists and the Iranian guide were abducted by a drug- trafficking ring who demanded a EUR five million ransom. He could give no further details but said police had seized 40 tons of drugs from the bands within the last eight months and the ransom money might be an effort to compensate for that loss. The head of Iranian tourism, Mohammad Abd-Khodaie, told the student news agency ISNA Tuesday that Iran is still a very safe place for tourists, except for the border areas to Afghanistan and Pakistan where the tourists were abducted. "I hate it when that happens." Posted by: Seafarious 2003-12-09 |
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