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Pull out troops or we burn hostages alive
Families plead for Japanese hostages
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Pull out troops or we burn hostages alive
By David Blair in Baghdad, Colin Joyce in Tokyo and Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 09/04/2004) Iraqi gunmen took three Japanese civilians captive yesterday and threatened to burn them alive unless Tokyo withdrew its forces, sharply raising the stakes in the uprising that has swept central and southern Iraq.As coalition troops fought house-to-house to subdue the town of Fallujah, having earlier lost control of several towns, the insurgents opened up a new front with a rash of kidnappings.
The hostages are Miss Nahoko Takato, 34, Noriaki Imai, 18, both aid workers, and Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a press cameraman.The gunmen standing behind them in a bullet-scarred room said they were members of the Mujahideen Brigades, a hitherto unknown group.
They issued a statement to Japan: "Three of your children have fallen into our hands and we give you two options - withdraw your forces or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters. You have three days."
Other non-Iraqis appeared to be among the hostages, raising speculation that one could be Gary Teeley, 37, a British contractor seized on Tuesday near Nasiriyah. A Canadian aid worker has also been kidnapped.
Mr Teeley, a father of five, moved to Dubai more than two years ago and was in charge of a laundry contract for a Qatari firm at a US base. No demand has been made by his captors.
Rejecting the ultimatum, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, said: "Our Self-Defence Forces are providing reconstruction support for Iraqi people so there is no reason to withdraw.
"If innocent civilians are taken hostage as reported, it is unforgivable. We demand their immediate release."Kidnapping and robbery, always a danger on Iraq's lawless roads, has been elevated to an act of resistance against the coalition.
Iranian television reported that two Israeli Arabs, one of them working for an American aid agency, had been captured by a group calling itself Ansar al-Din group.
Seven pastors from South Korea were taken prisoner while driving along the main highway linking Baghdad with the Jordanian capital, Amman. Gunmen detained them for several hours before releasing them unharmed. The highway runs past Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, and directly through the area where the fighting was most intense.
Two marines were killed as US forces fought street by street to root out militants after gunmen killed four US civilian security contractors and publicly mutilated their bodies last week. Six US soldiers have died in the last two days.
The area has been sealed off since Monday and bombarded by helicopters, jet fighters and heavy artillery.
Hospitals in Fallujah reported that about 300 Iraqis had died in the fighting, the heaviest since the war last year. Appeals for medicine, food and blood donations have been broadcast by mosques across Baghdad.
Sympathy for Fallujah's 250,000 people, who are overwhelmingly Sunni, transcends Iraq's sectarian divide and is causing deep anger against the Americans.
Followers of the militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have seized full or partial control of four cities and towns - Kut, Najaf, Karbala and Kufa - since the uprising began last weekend.
America's most senior general in Iraq promised to retake them. The eviction of Sadr's Mahdi army from Kut is particularly important after the gunmen drove a Ukrainian battalion out of the provincial capital on Wednesday.
Gen Ricardo Sanchez said that Operation Resolute Sword would be launched to retake Kut "imminently". He said coalition forces would mount "deliberate, precise and robust combat operations to separate, isolate and destroy the enemy wherever we find him".
The Shi'ite festival of Arba'een has drawn hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from across the world to Najaf and Karbala, complicating any plans for a military offensive.
Sadr is believed to be inside the Shrine of Ali, in Najaf, one the holiest sites of the Shi'ite strand of Islam.
Polish and Bulgarian forces came under heavy attack in Karbala. Their base in the city hall was hit by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from a large force of Sadr militiamen. But the coalition forces suffered no casualties and were not dislodged.
The past five days of fighting have claimed the lives of 50 coalition soldiers and about 460 Iraqis, prompting critics of President George W Bush to draw comparisons with the quagmire of the Vietnam war.
But Gen Sanchez said: "I don't see any shadows of Vietnam in Iraq."
Earlier in the day, Nuri Badran, Iraq's interim interior minister, resigned. He was responsible for the 70,000-strong police force, which has failed to resist Sadr's militias. In some cases police have sided with the gunmen against US forces.
Mr Badran said he was resigning because Paul Bremer, the American administrator, was "not satisfied with the performance of the interior ministry".
Recent events have shown that Iraq will be dependent on the coalition to provide security long after the June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty
Families plead for Japanese hostages From Richard Lloyd Parry and Leo Lewis in TokyoTHE families of three Japanese hostages in Iraq yesterday pleaded with their Government to save their lives by pulling its troops out of the country after Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister, insisted there would be no compromise with the kidnappers.
Japanese, American and British intelligence officials were scrambling to track down the hostage takers, who have threatened to burn their young captives alive tomorrow if Japan’s Self-Defence Forces do not withdraw from Iraq.
Japanese politicians and officials were bracing themselves for an emotional public reaction if, as many now fear is inevitable, the captives are murdered.
“Politically speaking, we’re preparing for the worst,” Kiyohiko Toyama, a Japanese MP for the Komei party, the coalition partner of Mr Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party, told The Times. “We have a reasonable expectation that these people might be killed by the hostage takers.”
The seizure of the three hostages, including an 18-year-old who had just left school, leaves Mr Koizumi in an agonising position, trapped between the demands of his closest allies and those of the Japanese public. Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, flies into Tokyo today to give a show of American support to Mr Koizumi, and to urge him not to give in to the kidnappers.
Asked if there was any chance of the Japanese Government yielding to the demands of the hostages, Mr Koizumi replied: “We will not yield to any despicable threat by terrorists.”
As the US and its allies urged Mr Koizumi to stand firm, the families of the captives begged the Government to pull the Japanese SelfDefence Forces out of Iraq and save the lives of their loved ones.
Naoko Imai, the mother of 18-year-old Noriaki Imai, said: “I don’t think they can be saved if the Government does not consider pulling the troops out — there are only two days left.” Kimiko Koriyama, whose 32-year-old son, Soichiro, is among the hostages, said: “I cannot bear to think that my child might be burned alive.”
The two men, along with Nahoko Takato, a 34-year-old female aid worker, were kidnapped while travelling along the dangerous road between Amman, the Jordanian capital, and Baghdad. A video, showing the blindfolded captives screaming as knives are pressed against their throats, was delivered on Thursday to al-Jazeera, the Arabic television channel, along with a letter insisting that the Japanese troops pull out within three days.
The captors identified themselves as a hitherto unknown group called Saraya al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Brigades). Yesterday, officials in Tokyo and Baghdad were poring over the video and letter for clues which might lead them to the hostages. The US and British Governments have promised to share intelligence with Tokyo. But Japanese officials hold out little hope of a rescue before tomorrow’s deadline, and are concentrating on minimising the political damage.
“When the worst does happen the Government will be able to say it did everything in its power,” a senior government official said last night.
The Japanese Foreign Minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, met relatives of the hostages yesterday. In Parliament, Mr Koizumi insisted on business as usual, resisting opposition calls for a special debate on the hostage crisis.
“In the end it depends on the Japanese public’s reaction,” said Mr Toyama, a senior aide to the Komeito leader, Takenori Kanzaki, who visited Iraq last year.
“I think 50 to 60 per cent of Japanese people support the Japanese Government’s position that there must be no compromise with terrorism. But this could change dramatically if the three hostages are brutally killed.”
The hostage crisis is a defining moment for the Government of Mr Koizumi, Japan’s most assertive and internationally minded post-war Prime Minister.
When he came to power three years ago, Japan rarely made its presence felt overseas. Mr Koizumi has employed the Self-Defence Forces in ways which would have been unthinkable under his predecessor, and established a warm relationship with George Bush and Tony Blair.
Polls show that his support for the war in Iraq and the dispatch of 550 troops to the Iraqi city of Samawa has divided the Japanese public, although demonstrations have so far have been small and few.
The Government’s fear is that the deaths of the three hostages could galvanise popular opposition to Japan’s involvement in Iraq and bring down Mr Koizumi.
“Japanese have been taken hostage before in countries like the Philippines, but that was for economic reasons, for ransom,” said Koichi Nakano, a lecturer in politics at Tokyo’s Sophia University. “This has happened because of the Government’s policies in Iraq and so it is much easier to place blame.”
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