German president makes video appeal to Iraq abductors

Mar 14, 2007, 15:15 GMT

Berlin - German President Horst Koehler on Wednesday appealed to kidnappers who seized a German woman and her son in Iraq last month to free the two hostages.

'I appeal to you to release Frau Krause and her son promptly,' the president said in a video message. So much innocent blood has flowed in Iraq ... Let the hostages return to their family.'

The video was due to be broadcast in Germany and throughout the Middle East on Wednesday.

Berlin-born Hannelore Krause and her son were seized by armed men who burst into their home in Baghdad on February 6.

The 61-year-old woman made a tearful plea for help to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a video posted by her abductors on an Islamist website Saturday.

   'I'm asking you to help me,' she sobbed. 'These people want to kill my son before my eyes and then kill me. I don't want to die like this,' she said in German.

A previously unknown group called the Arrows of Righteousness threatened to kill the pair unless Germany began to withdraw its 3,000 troops from Afghanistan within 10 days.

   German government ministers said they would not bow to the kidnappers demands.

   Last Friday, the German parliament approved the deployment of six Tornado reconnaissance warplanes to Afghanistan to assist NATO forces in their ground offensive against Islamist Taliban rebels.

   Krause is married to an Iraqi professor and has lived in Iraq for more than 20 years.

   Three other Germans kidnapped in the past 16 months in Iraq have all been released unharmed amid reports that ransoms were paid.