THE German Government angrily rebuked a former hostage yesterday who is determined to return to Iraq despite being held captive for three weeks by a Sunni gang.

Susanne Osthoff, a 43-year-old archaeologist, announced this week on al-Jazeera television that she would go back to her work in northern Iraq, trying to set up a German cultural centre in Arbil.

Angela Merkel’s new Government, which regards the freeing of Frau Osthoff this month as its first foreign policy triumph, is furious. It made huge efforts to secure her release and is widely believed to have paid a ransom.

It has now blocked all funding for her project and has told her that she should leave the region immediately. She is believed currently to be in Jordan, with her 12-year-old daughter, preparing to return.

“I would have little sympathy if Frau Osthoff puts herself again in danger considering the intensive efforts made by many people to secure her release,” said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, who headed a team that negotiated her release.

Other foreign policy experts were less diplomatic. “A self-willed woman!” exploded Hans-Ulrich Klose, the deputy leader of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. “Incomprehensible,” agreed Ruprecht Polenz, the committee chairman. “In the event of a second kidnapping one would have to discuss who should foot the bill.”

German newspapers have been full of letters complaining about how much she has cost the taxpayer. Peter Scholl-Latour, the country’s leading Middle East expert, complained: “She is absolutely irresponsible — she is just kicking the Government on the shins.”

Frau Osthoff, however, seems likely to go ahead with her plans. Despite the national relief at her release, she refused to return to Germany for Christmas. Although she was released on December 18, she has yet to telephone her mother.

Frau Osthoff converted to Islam, speaks Arabic and was married to a nomadic tribesman from the region near the Iraqi-Syrian border; she plainly considers Iraq to be her home.

The circumstances of her abduction are only now beginning to leak out. She was due to travel north from Baghdad for a meeting about her projects. Her driver, however, took her only to a house in the capital. She was pulled into an apartment by three men.

The driver appears to have been working with the kidnappers and has since disappeared. British Special Forces in Iraq offered their assistance to Germany — which has no troops on the ground — but the Germans declined.

Eventually the kidnappers made contact. One of the middle men, according to German media reports, may have actually been one of the hostage takers. He has dropped out of sight.

Frau Osthoff was unharmed and, according to security sources quoted in Der Spiegel, the sharp-tongued archaeologist made full use of her Arabic fluency to reprimand the kidnappers. It appears they were relieved to see her go.

• Poland will keep its troops in Iraq until the end of 2006, it announced yesterday, reversing the previous Government’s decision. It will cut their number by 600, however.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game