Semple’s wife, Sally, said the news of her husband’s release had come “completely out of the blue” on August 22.
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He had reportedly been working as an engineer when he was kidnapped in February previous year by al Qaida.
The UAE said Semple was freed during a military intelligence operation and taken to Aden before being flown by UAE military aircraft to Abu Dhabi.
The Foreign Office in London confirmed that a British hostage in Yemen had been freed by UAE forces but did not identify him and also provided no further details. “Thanks to the UAE for their help”, he wrote.
United Arab Emirates forces based in Aden, meanwhile, freed a British hostage who had been held by the group, the UAE state news agency WAM said on Sunday.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Semple had praised the work of UAE forces and is safe and well.
Douglas Robert Semple, a 64-year old petroleum engineer, was working in the Hadramaut area when he was kidnapped in February 2014.
Witnesses said the kidnappers struck the Briton on the head with the butt of a rifle, before driving him away towards an unknown location.
Earlier this summer Al Qaeda militants in Yemen killed two alleged spies following the assassination of the terrorist group’s leader in a suspected US drone strike.
Even with more troops, retaking Sana’a won’t be as easy for the coalition as its gains in the south where it had more popular support, said Farea al-Muslimi, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
In January 1999, another Hunt Oil Company worker was kidnapped in Yemen by tribesmen from his compound but later released amid reports that up to eight Western workers in Yemen were being held hostage at the time.
The Houthis had seized the capital Sanaa last September.
In July 2014, Mike Harvey was released five months after being captured in Sanaa.
Backed by heavy airstrikes, anti-rebel forces pushed the Houthis out of Aden last month.
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The U.A.E. government declined to comment on its operations in Yemen, though its officials have accused Iran of seeking to expand its regional influence by backing the Houthis. The following October his deputy, Fionna Gibb, escaped a rocket attack in the city.
