Freed hostages to be questioned by offiicals

Three European engineers are to be questioned by Bangladeshi intelligence officials after they were released by their kidnappers after a month in captivity.

The Briton and two Danes, engineers working for a Copenhagen-based construction company, were freed in an army commando raid on the kidnappers' forest hide-out in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Intelligence police are to question the engineers, Tim Selby, 28, of Oldham, Torben Mikkelsen, 48, and Nils Hulgaard, 64, to gather details about their kidnappers.

A senior police official said: "It is important for us to know who those tribal kidnappers were to prevent such terrorism."

The three engineers were flown by an army helicopter to the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, on Sunday and taken to a military hospital for a checkup.

Journalists have been barred from the hospital inside Dhaka garrison and security at the hospital has been tightened.

The Foreign Ministry said the men would be able to return home once they had completed medical tests and some formalities.

The men were abducted from an isolated road in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a region of dense forests and rugged hills about 210 miles southeast of Dhaka.

The engineers were working for the the Copenhagen-based construction consultancy firm Kampsax. The three were surveying the area for construction of a highway funded by Denmark when they were taken hostage.

Syed Moazzem Ali, a top bureaucrat at the Foreign Ministry, said the three were "cheerful and doing fine" after meeting with them on Monday.