Kuwait envoy's son held after Jews abducted

updated 1:00 p.m. ET May 6, 2008

WARSAW, Poland - Polish authorities charged the Kuwaiti ambassador's son Tuesday with briefly abducting three Jewish teenagers at a hotel and claiming he had a bomb, police said.

The 23-year-old son of Ambassador Khaled Al-Shaibani, identified only as Mohammad A., was charged with holding the teenagers against their will, Warsaw police spokesman Anna Kedzierzawska said.

Kedzierzawska said the suspect has confessed and faces a suspended sentence of 10 months to three years.

Prosecutors were questioning the suspect and were to decide later Tuesday whether to release him or keep him under arrest pending a court hearing. No date has been set for the hearing.

The Kuwaiti Embassy confirmed the suspect was Ambassador Khaled Al-Shaibani's son, but declined further comment.

On Monday, police said a heavily intoxicated Mohammad A. pulled the three 16-year-old Brazilians into their sixth-floor room of Warsaw's Holiday Inn after 9 a.m.

Witnesses alerted hotel guards, who rushed to the site. The guards called police when the Kuwaiti said he had explosives, police said.

Agents stormed the room just before 10 a.m. and captured the suspect without incident. None of the hostages were harmed and no explosives were found.

Mohammad A. was too intoxicated to undergo questioning Monday, police said, but spoke with authorities on Tuesday.

The three teenagers were among about 10,000 people from around the world, mostly Jewish, who came to Poland to take part in the March of the Living last Thursday, an annual event at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau that honors the memory of some 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

At least 1.1 million people, including Jews, Poles and Roma, perished in the camp's gas chambers or from starvation, disease and forced labor. The camp was liberated in January 1945 by Soviet troops.

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