Naseer Al-Nahr • Arab News
BAGHDAD, 19 January 2005 — Kidnappers released footage yesterday of eight Chinese hostages it threatened to execute unless Beijing “clarifies its role” in Iraq, while a Syrian Catholic archbishop was released a day after being captured.
In a tape broadcast on TV networks and showing eight Chinese nationals holding up their passports guarded by two hooded men, the kidnappers charged the group had “worked with US forces in Iraq”.
“We ask the Chinese government to clarify its position toward those and other Chinese who have entered Iraq to help occupation forces,” said one of them without identifying his organization.
The Chinese Embassy in Baghdad confirmed that eight construction workers from the southern province of Fujian had been abducted last week on the main highway from Iraq to Jordan, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.
Another video released yesterday showed a Lebanese held by a previously unknown group on charges of working with the US military. The embassy could not immediately confirm his capture.
The latest hostage crisis came quick on the heels of another kidnapping episode that sent shockwaves through Iraq’s small Christian minority.
A Syrian Catholic archibishop nabbed in the northern city of Mosul on Monday afternoon, was released by his captors less than 24 hours later.
Basile Georges Casmoussa said after his release that he had been treated well and explained that the kidnappers had captured him by mistake and did not request a ransom for his release.
Yet his statement contradicted earlier declarations by a senior prelate who said money was being collected to free him, as well as his own driver’s version of events. Insurgents fiercely opposed to the very principle of democratic polls have stepped up their attacks against the long-oppressed majority Shiites, who are expected to dominate the vote.
Yesterday, a suicide car bomber blew himself up and killed two other people near the headquarters of a leading Shiite party in Baghdad. The attack took place at a checkpoint some 30 meters from the headquarters of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) that is also home to party leader Abdel Aziz Hakim.
Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi’s group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement posted on the Internet. And Iraqi Interior Minister Falah Naqib warned the country risked sliding into civil war if the Sunni minority boycotted the elections.
“Failing to take part in the elections is tantamount to treason and will lead to a civil war and the division of the country,” the minister, himself a Sunni, told reporters.
Eleven other Iraqis were killed in a string of separate incidents across Iraq.
An electoral debate so far subdued by relentless violence and fear of insurgent reprisal for participation in the electoral process started gathering steam with the milestone elections now less than two weeks away.
US-backed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi staked his party’s election hopes on his reputation for tough security policies as he set out its platform for the polls.
“Security is the top priority and we have to defeat the terrorism both coming from inside and outside the country and to fortify our borders to stop the flow of criminals to our country,” Allawi told reporters.
His party, the Iraqi National Accord, also accused policemen loyal to the Shiite list of abusing their position to intimidate voters in the majority community’s southern heartland — a charge the alliance firmly denied.
— With input from agencies