FM Asks For Identification Of Abductors Of Iran Cultural Attache, His Release In Yemen

Tehran, July 22, IRNA – Deputy Foreign Minister in Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian here Saturday asked for Yemen government’s serious move aimed at identifying the agents involved in abduction of the Iranian Embassy cultural attache in Sana’a and his immediate release from captivity. “Following the phone call of our country’s foreign minister to his Yemeni counterpart an Operation Room has been established at Yemen Foreign Ministry to heed this affair, and to see into fast freedom of Nour-Ahmad Nikbakht,” reiterated Amir-Abdollahian in a phone talk with IRNA Political Desk, Sunday night. Armed men seized an employee of the Iranian embassy in Yemen’s capital Sana’a on Sunday, police sources said, the latest in a series of abductions of foreigners in the lawless Arab country. The identity of the Iranian diplomat’s abductors is still unclear. The Iranian cultural attache was traveling through the diplomatic quarter in southern Sana’a when gunmen blocked the road, forced him to get out of his vehicle and took him to an unknown location, the sources said. Yemen’s government is grappling with a host of challenges, including a separatist movement in the south and an Islamist insurgency, as it tries to restore authority lost during mass protests in 2011 that overthrew veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Disgruntled tribesmen also often take hostages to press the government to free jailed relatives or improve public services. A Saudi diplomat based in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden has been held hostage by Islamist militants linked to Al Qaida since March, 2012./end