Hostage-taker to Get Psychiatric Help

An Iranian asylum seeker who held four schoolgirls hostage in a bid to pressure the German government to allow his family to join him in Germany was set to be sent for psychiatric treatment on Wednesday. The 50-year-old man, armed with two knives, held the girls, aged between 11 and 16, hostage for five hours in the cellar of a suburban house in the town of Ennepetal near the Ruhr Valley before police stormed the building. He had boarded a bus carrying schoolchildren and then forced them into the house. One of the girls suffered a slight knife wound but they were otherwise unharmed.