GERMANY: Fourteen European hostages arrived home "exhausted but happy" to Germany early yesterday morning after their five-month ordeal in the Sahara Desert.
The group of nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutch man were flown by the German air force to Cologne yesterday morning after flying through the night from Bamako, the capital of Mali.
The former hostages, some thin and bearded, waved to the waiting media as they stepped off the aircraft before being whisked to meet their families.
"We are very happy, very relieved that we survived everything," said Mr Witek Mitko, one of the hostages from the German city of Augsburg. "We couldn't believe it at the beginning but it was told to us," said Mr Kurt Schuster, also from Augsburg, of the news that they were to be released.
They said they were treated well by the captors and survived on a diet of "macaroni, rice, bread and bad water".
Officials called the negotiations the "most protracted and complex rescue" carried out by the German government but declined to discuss the details or reports in the Algerian media of a €4 million ransom paid by the Mali government to Algerian Islamic radicals.
"The state of their health is exceptionally good and they are in very good mental condition but they will need time to deal with this," said Mr Jürgen Chrobog, of the German Foreign Ministry.
Algerian newspapers reported that the tourists were taken hostage by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, who are fighting for a purist Islamist state.
They warned that a "dangerous precedent" had been set if a ransom payment ended the drama which began in February and March when 32 tourists travelling through the southern Sahara began to vanish in small groups.
Last May, 17 of the hostages were freed after a strike by Algerian commandoes. The remaining 15 were brought into northern Mali and kept on the move through barren desert in temperatures often topping 45 degrees.
One of the hostages, Michaela Spitzer (46), a German woman, died of heatstroke on June 28th. German authorities said the surviving hostages knew where she was buried and they were confident her body could be brought back to Germany for burial.
The German Chancellor,Mr Gerhard Schröder, said he heard of the hostages release "with relief and joy" and thanked the Algerian authorities and the Malian President, Mr Amadou Toumani Toure, for their help in securing their release.
"It seems important to me that the kidnappers don't escape unpunished," said Mr Schröder in a statement. "That is why German security authorities will support the Algerian and Malian partners in everything that could help seize the kidnappers and put them on trial."