Kidnapped Estonians Beg for Help in Online Video
An unauthenticated video uploaded to YouTube late Tuesday shows seven Estonians kidnapped last month in eastern Lebanon begging Lebanese, Saudi, Jordanian, and French leaders to help them return home.
A local website received a tip Wednesday of the undated video, uploaded on April 19 by a user named thekidnaper2011.
The video runs just over one minute and shows each of seven men in sportswear, who appeared unharmed, begging for help in English.
"We are turning to you, prime minister of Lebanon Saad Hariri, the King of Saudi Arabia King Abdullah, the King of Jordan King Abdullah, the President of France Mr. Sarkozy, please do anything to help us to get back home," said one of the seven.
"Please give what (the kidnappers) have asked ... please make everything to get us back home to our families as soon as possible."
"This is a really difficult situation," said another. "Please do anything, do everything, what it takes to get us home."
"Help us" and "Please help us," said others.
The video appeared online hours after Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet wrapped up a trip to Lebanon, during which he said there were no new leads on the fate of the seven Estonian cyclists who were abducted on March 23.
"There are still many versions, but the most concrete, or fact-based, is that some people have been arrested" in connection with the kidnapping, Paet told reporters in Beirut. "Other than that, there are no facts."
The Estonians went missing in the eastern Bekaa Valley after entering Lebanon from Syria. The motive for their abduction remains unclear.
Eleven Lebanese were charged last week with the kidnapping.
Authorities have said the Estonians may have been moved across the porous border to Syria.
A police intelligence officer and a main suspect in the kidnapping were killed on April 11 in a shootout in Majdal Anjar, a town near the Syrian border known to harbor Sunni extremist groups and fugitives.
A previously unheard of group, Haraket al-Nahda Wal-Islah (Movement for Renewal and Reform), has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and demanded an unspecified ransom to free the seven Estonians.
The claim was made in an email to local website, but has not been authenticated by security officials.
Abductions have been rare in Lebanon since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war during which nearly 100 foreigners, mostly Americans and western Europeans, were kidnapped.
Two Polish tourists were rescued by the army after being seized by a clan in September in the Bekaa, a region notorious for lawlessness, drug trafficking and feuding clans.
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