VBangladesh kidnappers free European hostages

DHAKA, March 17: Bangladeshi kidnappers freed on Saturday three Europeans who had been held hostage for a month in dense forest in the country's southeast, security officials said.

A security patrol found the hostages - two Danes and a Briton - about five kilometres from an army camp.

"The Europeans are in good health," said one official at Rangamati hill town, 400kms from Dhaka.

An army helicopter took the hostages to Dhaka for a checkup at the Combined Military Hospital, where a spokesman also said the three were fine.

The three, with beards grown during the captivity, smiled and waved, but did not speak to reporters and photographers as they walked from the helicopter to a military van that drove them to the hospital.

A British High Commission official told reporters: "They need to have some rest first. They have come through a big ordeal and are not in a mood to talk now."

Danes Torben Mikkelsen and Nils Hulgaard and Briton Tim Selby, who had been hired by a Danish company to work on a road development project, were seized at gunpoint by suspected tribal rebels at Guniapara in the southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts on Feb 16.

The kidnappers had been demanding a ransom of 1.6 million dollars.

Bangladesh refused to pay but on Friday offered amnesty if the kidnappers freed the captives unharmed.

"Their release was obtained without paying a ransom. We are happy that a long persuasion yielded a positive result and that the hostages are safe," an official at Rangamati told Reuters by telephone.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office in London told Reuters: "We're happy to confirm that Tim Selby and the two Danish hostages...have been released.

There was no indication of when the hostages would return home.

Selby's family was celebrating. "It's fantastic news," his brother Jon told Sky News. "We hope to see him soon back in this country," he said.

Authorities had not identified the kidnappers, but officials have said they believed the abductors were tribal militants opposed to a 1997 peace treaty between the government and the Shanti Bahini, which fought a 25-year guerilla war seeking greater autonomy for the hill tracts, which border India and Myanmar.-Reuters