Police officials on Thursday confirmed that gunmen have kidnapped a Lebanese businessman in Edo state, the second abduction in one week.
State police spokesman Etim Bassey confirmed that the kidnapping had taken place “on March 20 in Auchi by some unidentified gunmen who scaled the fences of his house and took him away”.
The spokesman said the culprits were yet to make any demands, adding that the man in question was a private business owner.
His kidnapping is one of a rash of recent abductions that have spread through Nigeria’s oil-producing regions in recent months.
Recently, Al Qaeda’s north Africa branch said it was holding another German engineer who had been kidnapped in Nigeria two months ago.
According to a Mauritania news agency, Al Qaeda in Maghreb (AQIM) said it was willing to negotiate the release of the captive with that of a jailed Muslim woman.
“We inform you that your compatriot Edgar Fritz Raupach is a prisoner of fighters from AQIM,” the group said in a statement published by the ANI agency.
The group demanded in the statement that the woman, Felis Lowitz, a recent Islam convert who now goes by the name Um Seiv Al-Islam Al-Ansariya, be released from her detention in Germany where they claim she is being tortured.
According to AFP reports, a video obtained by the ANI news agency showed Raupach, surrounded by masked gunmen with his hands tied behind his back.
In the video, Raupach, an engineer, called on his “parents, friends and German public opinion” to convince Berlin to “bring an end to the torture of our Muslim sister”, adding that his life depended on her freedom.
AQIM warned against any heroic rescue efforts, adding that his fate would be the same as that of Italian engineer Franco Lamolinara and British colleague Chris McManus, who were killed earlier this month during a failed rescue bid by British and Nigerian forces.
Germany confirmed Raupach, who was kidnapped on 25 January, is a citizen and construction company Bilfinger Berger has said he is one of their employees.
