Release our contractors, pleads British Ambassador
The British Ambassador to Iraq appealed yesterday for the release of the five Britons kidnapped from a government building in Baghdad last week by gunmen wearing Iraqi police commando uniform.
“I am greatly concerned about these five men,” Dominic Asquith, the British Ambassador to Iraq, told reporters at the embassy, speaking in Arabic. “Their families are deeply worried not to have news of them.
“I ask those holding them to release them so they may return to their families.” He added: “The British Government’s policy on these matters is clear and well known. We do not condone these actions.
“We have people here in Iraq who are ready to listen to any person about this incident, or any person who may be holding these men and who may wish to communicate.”
Different theories are circulating about who is behind the kidnappings, with Iraqi Government officials blaming the Shia Mahdi Army, while others say that it could be a group linked with Iran. Another possibility is an extremist Sunni gang.
A senior Iraqi official said that he did not believe that there had been contact with the abductors, whatever their identity. “Still, there are some leads, some strong leads,” he said. “Everybody feels that they have high hopes, that they will be able to find them and release them.”
Kidnapping has become a popular political tool for insurgent groups intent on pressurising the US-led coalition to leave Iraq and on undermining the Iraqi Government.
On Wednesday gunmen, again in Iraqi police commando uniform, kidnapped an Iraqi departmental director in the Ministry of Public Works from his office in Baghdad. An Interior Ministry spokesman said that he did not believe that the attack was related to the British abductions even though they occurred in the same area and both gangs wore similar outfits.
In another hostage drama 4,000 US troops and 2,000 Iraqis continued to search volatile terrain south of Baghdad for two American soldiers who were kidnapped after an ambush on May 12. The half-naked body of a third service-man was pulled from the Euphrates River last month.
The US military is studying a video said to show the ambush that led to the men’s capture by a group linked to al-Qaeda. A voice on the tape claimed that the soldiers had been killed.
Iraqi and US forces raided locations in Sadr City in Baghdad and detained 16 suspected members of a “secret cell terrorist network” believed to be involved in the transport of weapons, including advanced roadside bombs, from Iran to Iraq, the US command said.
In all, at least 25 violent deaths were reported by police yesterday, including the murder of a Iraqi woman journalist, shot dead while she was waiting for a taxi in the northern city of Mosul. Sahar al-Haidari, a 45-year-old mother of four, covered political and cultural news for the independent Voices of Iraq news agency and was its second employee to be killed in just over a week.
Deborah Haynes in Baghdad
From The Times
June 8, 2007
© Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd
Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times.
London UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1901932.ece
“I am greatly concerned about these five men,” Dominic Asquith, the British Ambassador to Iraq, told reporters at the embassy, speaking in Arabic. “Their families are deeply worried not to have news of them.
“I ask those holding them to release them so they may return to their families.” He added: “The British Government’s policy on these matters is clear and well known. We do not condone these actions.
“We have people here in Iraq who are ready to listen to any person about this incident, or any person who may be holding these men and who may wish to communicate.”
Different theories are circulating about who is behind the kidnappings, with Iraqi Government officials blaming the Shia Mahdi Army, while others say that it could be a group linked with Iran. Another possibility is an extremist Sunni gang.
A senior Iraqi official said that he did not believe that there had been contact with the abductors, whatever their identity. “Still, there are some leads, some strong leads,” he said. “Everybody feels that they have high hopes, that they will be able to find them and release them.”
Kidnapping has become a popular political tool for insurgent groups intent on pressurising the US-led coalition to leave Iraq and on undermining the Iraqi Government.
On Wednesday gunmen, again in Iraqi police commando uniform, kidnapped an Iraqi departmental director in the Ministry of Public Works from his office in Baghdad. An Interior Ministry spokesman said that he did not believe that the attack was related to the British abductions even though they occurred in the same area and both gangs wore similar outfits.
In another hostage drama 4,000 US troops and 2,000 Iraqis continued to search volatile terrain south of Baghdad for two American soldiers who were kidnapped after an ambush on May 12. The half-naked body of a third service-man was pulled from the Euphrates River last month.
The US military is studying a video said to show the ambush that led to the men’s capture by a group linked to al-Qaeda. A voice on the tape claimed that the soldiers had been killed.
Iraqi and US forces raided locations in Sadr City in Baghdad and detained 16 suspected members of a “secret cell terrorist network” believed to be involved in the transport of weapons, including advanced roadside bombs, from Iran to Iraq, the US command said.
In all, at least 25 violent deaths were reported by police yesterday, including the murder of a Iraqi woman journalist, shot dead while she was waiting for a taxi in the northern city of Mosul. Sahar al-Haidari, a 45-year-old mother of four, covered political and cultural news for the independent Voices of Iraq news agency and was its second employee to be killed in just over a week.
Deborah Haynes in Baghdad
From The Times
June 8, 2007
© Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd
Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times.
London UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1901932.ece
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