US women call Egypt captors 'kind'

CAIRO (AP) — Their kidnappers gave them tea and dried fruit, and talked about religion and tribal rights. The California women were allowed to bring their Egyptian tour guide with them. One even put out his cigarette in the car when a hostage said the smoke was bothering her. The women abducted for several hours Friday by armed Bedouin tribesmen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula hesitated to call the men "captors," saying that the kidnappers were kind, polite and hospitable. "All of this is an unforgettable memory," Norma Supe, a 63-year-old nurse from Union City, Calif., told The Associated Press. "Maybe God had a purpose for this. It was probably to encourage more faith in me." Supe and Patti Ganal, of Los Gatos, Calif., were snatched Friday from a minivan on a tour of Sinai, a restive region that has seen security crumble since Egypt's popular uprising last year. There have been attacks on police stations and bombings of gas pipelines running through Sinai. The abduction happened after Ganal, Supe, Ganal's husband and two other Americans had finished a tour of the sixth-century St. Catherine's Monastery, located at the foot of Mount Sinai where the Old Testament says Moses received the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.
US women call Egypt captors 'kind'