A Somali pirate gang on Saturday snatched Michael Scott Moore -- also said to have German nationality -- on the road to Galkayo airport and drove him to a remote jungle, Ecoterra International said.
"Negotiations by Somali elders in the hostage case of American writer Michael Scott Moore... have not brought the envisaged immediate unconditional release of the hostage," Ecoterra said in a statement.
Moore was being held alongside two hostages from Israel and the Seychelles taken from a hijacked Seychelles-flagged motorboat, it added.
Gunmen seized Moore from the same area where an American woman and a Danish man were also kidnapped in October. The two were freed on Wednesday in a dawn air raid by US special forces said to have killed eight pirates.
Some pirate gangs have branched out to land-based kidnappings, due both to increased security on ships as well as long periods of monsoon weather making seas rough to launch a hijack.
According to his website, Moore was a 2006-2007 Fulbright fellow in Berlin, where he edits and writes for Spiegel Online.
His travel book "Sweetness and Blood," about the spread of surfing to odd corners of the world, was named a book of the year by The Economist in 2010.
War-torn Somalia has been without an effective government for two decades and is one of the world`s most dangerous countries. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
Copyright © ANTARA 2012
