10/24/2004 3:25:00 PM GMT
Rebels commander in the Iraqi city of Falluja said that they are not holding Margaret Hassan, the director of CARE International in Iraq who was kidnapped three days ago, and condemned her kidnapping.
"This woman works for a humanitarian organisation. She should not have been kidnapped," the emir, or commander, of one of the Iraqi rebels groups of in Falluja, said on Sunday.
Margaret Hassan was kidnapped in Baghdad at 7:30 a.m., as she was on her way to work in western Baghdad, CARE International said in a statement released in London.
Hassan, who is in her early 60s, has been "providing humanitarian relief to the people of Iraq" for more than 25 years”.
However, the U.S. military and Iraqi government officials maintain that Falluja houses foreign militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Commanders of five rebels groups in Falluja have been interviewed and said that they were not holding Hassan and had seen no evidence that members of Al Zarqawi network had kidnapped her.
"She had been living in Iraq for 30 years and she was a humanitarian. The resistance did not kidnap her because this would have left a bad impression of the resistance in the world," said the commander, who asked not to be named.
Hassan is the eighth woman hostage to have been kidnapped in Iraq over the past six months. Others, including two Italian aid workers who were held for three weeks last month, have been released unharmed.
Falluja rebels commander said there’s no political motive for abducting Hassan, who had worked in Iraq for the aid agency Care International since the early 1990s.
"If she was suspect, Saddam Hussein's intelligence agents would have found out a long time ago," he said.
If Margaret got executed, she will be the first woman hostage to be killed in Iraq, for although several women have been abducted in Iraq's spate of kidnappings, none of them have been killed, but freed unharmed.
On Tuesday, the Arab television station Al-Jazeera aired a video showing Hassan, in a white shirt, sitting in a room with bare white walls. An editor at the station said the tape had no audio. The name of the group kidnapping Margaret couldn’t be identified, also the kidnappers didn’t issue any demands.
Margaret’s husband, Tahseen Ali Hassan, said that his wife never received any threats and that the kidnappers had not contacted anyone for any demands.
"Nothing like this happened before", he said.
Agency appeals to kidnappers
Care International, the humanitarian aide agency, has made a televised appeal asking the Hassan's kidnappers to immediately release her.
Secretary-general Denis Caillaux addressed the kidnappers sayng " understand she is an Iraqi" and called for her immediate release.