BERLIN, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- A 60-year-old German woman and her son have been abducted in Iraq since more than two weeks but they are still alive, a German news magazine said.
The kidnappers contacted family relatives in Germany through a cellular phone and delivered proof the woman and her son were still alive, German news magazine Der Spiegel said.
The kidnappers threatened to kill the woman and her son if Germany does not cease political and economic activities with Iraq. Experts are still unsure whether the kidnapping has a political or a purely ransom-motivated background.
The pair has been missing since Feb. 6. On the same day, a German Foreign Ministry crisis group was created to get them released.
The woman, who hails from near Berlin, has lived in Iraq for more than 20 years and is married to an Iraqi professor; her son works as a technician in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, it was reported.
The abduction comes less than a year after two German engineers, Rene Braeunlich and Thomas Nitzschke, were held captive by insurgents for 100 days before they were released after Germany reportedly paid ransoms.
The engineers, from the eastern German city of Leipzig, were taken at gunpoint from their workplace by unidentified men on Jan. 24, 2006, in the Sunni triangle in Iraq. Employed by German engineering firm Cryotec, they had joined a work crew at an Iraqi oil plant in the industrial town of Biji.
U.S., German and Iraqi intelligence helped to release the men, it was reported afterward. Observers now hope the same channels can be activated to free the latest abductees.
