- BAGHDAD (AFP) - Three Japanese
hostages were freed unharmed Thursday a week after being captured by Iraqi
rebels who had threatened to kill them unless Japan withdrew its troops
from the US-led coalition in Iraq.
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- The three were handed over to the Committee of Muslim
Scholars in Baghdad, just hours after the execution of an Italian hostage
by a different group of abductors had upped the ante in the week-long spate
of kidnappings.
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- There was relief in Tokyo that the three had been released,
but concern too for the fate of two other Japanese believed to have been
taken hostage after they went missing in Iraq on Wednesday.
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- An official with the Baghdad committee, Sheikh Abdul
Salam Kubaissi, told AFP all three were at its headquarters at the Um al-Qura
mosque in west Baghdad. "They are in very good health," he added.
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- A Japanese official in Tokyo said the three were in "good
shape," and were being moved to the Japanese embassy in Baghdad.
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- Volunteer workers Noriaki Imai, 18, Nahoko Takato, 34,
and photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, were abducted by a group calling
itself the "Mujahedeen Brigades" on April 8.
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- The kidnappers had threatened to start executing the
hostages by April 12 unless Japan withdrew its 550 troops, in Iraq for
humanitarian reasons. Tokyo had rejected the demands.
-
- "Great! Yes!" relatives of the hostages yelled
in chorus while watching television footage of the three relaxing at the
committee's headquarters broadcast by public network NHK.
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- "My thanks to everybody for their support. I appreciate
it," said Yosuke Imai, 23, brother of Noriaki.
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- The kidnappings had shocked Japan to core, and thrown
the country into turmoil over the controversial deployment of troops abroad
-- albeit for humanitarian purposes -- for the first time since World War
II.
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- The Baghdad committee thanked the group "for its
response to our call" to release the Japanese hostages.
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- It also urged Japanese "officials, organisations
and humanitarian groups" to exert pressure on the US-led occupation
forces to "release all Iraqi female detainees who ... are subjected
to inhumane treatment in jail".
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- US officials have said that about 40 foreigners are being
held in Iraq by shadowy, disparate groups calling for an end to the US
occupation.
-
- An official said the Al-Qaeda terror network may be behind
the spate of kidnappings, as the Italian government confirmed that 35-year-old
Fabrizio Quattrocchi had become the first known hostage to be executed
by kidnappers.
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- The Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel said it had
received a chilling video of the killing, in which Quattrocchi had apparently
been shot in the back of the neck. But it added it would not broadcast
the images as they were too disturbing.
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- It said the kidnappers -- who called themselves "the
Green Brigade" -- had also threatened to kill the remaining three
Italian hostages seized on Monday with Quattrocchi if Italy did not withdraw
its troops from Iraq.
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- No-one really knows who is behind the kidnappings, which
have complicated the tense situation on the ground amid some of the fiercest
fighting since Saddam Hussein was toppled a year ago.
-
- US military General General Richard Myers, the chairman
of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday US troops numbers would
be increased in Iraq due to "significant security challenges."
-
- A US military official said the coalition was working
with the FBI and international security agencies to track down the hostages
and free them.
-
- He suggested that the Al-Qaeda network of wanted terror
mastermind Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks on the
US, was orchestrating the abductions.
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- "Look at the former Iraqi intelligence service,
look at former high-ranking Iraqi military, look at the leadership of terrorist
groups such as Ansar al-Islam, Al-Qaeda, the Zarqawi network," the
US military official said.
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- "There may be numerous marriages of convenience
going on here."
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- His charges came as a video tape broadcast in Dubai and
attributed to bin Laden offered European countries a truce if they withdrew
their troops from Islamic countries.
-
- "Peace will come into force with the departure of
(their) last soldier from our countries," said a voice on the tape,
which had yet to be authenticated.
-
- But within minutes of each other, Britain, Spain, Italy
and the European Union rejected the offer as a ploy by terrorists.
-
- "The idea of an armistice with a group that defines
itself by violence is an absurdity," a British Foreign Office spokesman
said.
-
- Furthering heightening regional tensions, US President
George W. Bush broke with a decades-old US policy on the Middle East by
saying Israel could keep some Arab land captured in the 1967 war and Palestinian
refugees should not be allowed to return to land lost in the creation of
Israel in 1948.
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- His comments late Wednesday sparked Palestinian outrage,
with veteran leader Yasser Arafat saying the Palestinians would never give
up their struggle for freedom and independence and calling emergency talks
of Islamic nations.
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- In another sign of the detriorating security situation
an Iranian diplomat was gunned down in Baghdad by unknown assailants.
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- "We just received news of an Iranian diplomat shot
dead on the street near the embassy," the head of a visiting Iranian
foreign ministry delegation Hossein Sadeghi told AFP, saying the assassination
was probably linked to the visit.
-
- Governments and foreign firms have been reviewing their
presence in Iraq as the abductions test nerves already frayed over mounting
security problems.
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- Dubai-based television Al-Arabiya said it had obtained
a copy of a message from the "Mujahedeen Brigades" in which the
group threatened that all Americans and nationals from coalition countries
were legitimate targets of a hostage-taking campaign.
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- But despite the killing of the Italian hostage, Italy's
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rejected rebel demands to withdraw the
3,000 Italian troops from Iraq.
-
- The kidnappers "have broken a life, they have not
broken our values and commitment to peace," he said.
-
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