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| Africa North |
| Chinese Workers Freed after Cairo Kidnapping |
| 2012-03-02 |
| Two Chinese workers, kidnapped for ransom in Cairo on Thursday in a sign of growing insecurity a year after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... , were released after several hours, an embassy official said. "They are free," embassy spokesperson Lu Jingchun told Agence La Belle France Presse, without providing details of how the pair's release had been secured. Earlier, another embassy official told AFP the kidnappers were seeking a ransom payment. "Two Chinese workers were hijacked by gunnies this morning in Cairo. They want money," the official told AFP. "The two work at a stone materials company, which mainly focuses on producing marble," the official added. An Egyptian security source said it was the first kidnapping of foreigners for ransom in Cairo that he could remember. China's state Xinhua news agency quoted the deputy head of the Chinese People Association in Egypt, Chen Jiannan, as saying that the kidnappers were demanding a ransom of 500,000 Egyptian pounds ($83,000/62,000 euros). The pair was leaving for work from their residence in the Maadi neighborhood of south Cairo when they were seized, Chen added. The kidnapping came barely a month after 25 workers in a military-owned cement factory in the Sinai Peninsula were kidnapped by Egyptian Bedouin demanding the release of Islamist relatives. They were freed unharmed on February 1 after being held for 24 hours. |
| Posted by:Fred |