Susanne Osthoff, 43, who spent more than three weeks in the hands of Iraqi abductors, has left Iraq, the Foreign Office in Berlin said Wednesday, three days after she reached the safety of the German diplomatic mission in Baghdad, according to DPA. In a new development, Germany's ARD television news reported from Berlin that senior German security officials suspect Osthoff's driver, Khaled al-Shimani, may have been an accomplice of the abductors rather than a victim of the attack. Osthoff, a solo aid worker and archaeologist who is a longtime resident of Iraq, has told German diplomats she does not want to meet the media. Her family in Germany said they had not heard from her yet. In a phone conversation with senior Foreign Office official Klaus Scharioth, Osthoff said she wanted to spend a few days in privacy with her 12-year-old daughter, who attends a German boarding school.
