Croatia says criminals involved in Egypt abduction

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina – The alleged beheading of a Croatian hostage in Egypt took a sinister turn Thursday with the revelation that a criminal gang kidnapped him, then demanded a ransom from his employer before turning him over to the Islamic State group.

The French geoscience company that the 30-year-old oil and gas surveyor worked for said it tried in vain to contact his abductors after receiving their emailed demand for cash.

The kidnapping and apparent beheading of Tomislav Salopek, who was snatched in broad daylight on the outskirts of Cairo, is the first of its kind involving a foreigner in Egypt. It is sure to deal a blow to the government’s efforts to project stability and buttress an economic turnaround following years of unrest in the wake of Egypt’s Arab Spring.

Christophe Barnini, spokesman for Salopek’s employer, CGG Ardiseis, said the company received an email with a ransom demand eight days after his July 22 kidnapping, but it included no contact number and multiple responses to the address it came from went unanswered. The company’s emails asked for proof of life and included a telephone number for the kidnappers to contact, Barnini said, adding that CGG was acting on directives from Croatian and Egyptian authorities.

On Aug. 5, a video emerged showing Salopek, shackled and clad in a beige jumpsuit, as a hostage of the Islamic State group’s Egyptian affiliate, the Sinai Province of the Islamic State.

At that point, his captors did not demand money but set a 48-hour deadline for the release of “Muslim women” from Egyptian jails – a reference to the hundreds of female Islamist prisoners detained in a sweeping government crackdown following the 2013 ouster of the country’s Islamist president.

“The conclusion was that … we were dealing with two different organizations,” Croatia’s Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic told reporters Thursday. “One that kidnapped him and the other that identified itself as the Islamic State.”

On Wednesday, a still photo circulated by IS supporters on social media appeared to show Salopek’s beheaded body, with a knife and the black flag used by the extremist group planted in the sand. A caption in Arabic said he was killed “for his country’s participation in the war against the Islamic State.”