BERLIN, March 15 (UPI) -- German President Horst Koehler has pleaded with Iraqi kidnappers to free a German woman and her son abducted last month.
"Too much innocent blood already has been spilled in Iraq," the president said in a video message broadcast Wednesday in Germany and the Middle East. "Give the hostages back to their families ... There is no political aim that justifies the kidnapping or killing of innocent people. No religion allows such behavior."
Berlin-born Hannelore Kraus, 61, and her son were snatched last month by armed men who entered their home in Baghdad, where the woman has lived since she had married an Iraqi professor.
Just a few days after a German aid worker was ambushed and executed by unknown individuals in northern Afghanistan, a video of the kidnapped pair was released last weekend showing the woman begging for her and her son's life.
"I am asking you to help me," Kraus, in tears, pleaded with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "We are Germans as well. These people want to kill my son before my eyes and then kill me. I don't want to die like this."
A crisis team has been set up in the German Foreign Ministry to get the pair released.
