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| Iraq |
| Zark's followers demand Amman bombers be sprung in video |
| 2005-12-25 |
| Militants in Iraq released a video of a Jordanian hostage on Saturday, giving Jordan three days to cut ties with the Baghdad government and free a female would-be suicide bomber involved in November attacks in Amman. The Jordanian government immediately rejected the demand. The video showed Mahmoud Suleiman Saidat, a driver for the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad who was snatched by gunmen Tuesday. In a segment of video aired on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel, Saidat identified himself and read a statement as he sat surrounded by three masked men holding automatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. A sign superimposed on the footage identified the kidnappers as a previously unknown group, the Hawk Brigades. "I ask the Jordanian government to withdraw its diplomatic mission from Iraq and not to deal with this illegitimate government (in Baghdad)," Saidat said. He also called for Jordan to release Sajida al-Rishawi, a would-be suicide bomber whose explosives belt failed to go off in Nov. 9 attacks on Amman hotels that killed 60 people. Al-Arabiya said the statement in the video gave the Jordanian government three days to meet the demands. It did not specify whether the militants threatened to kill Saidat if the deadline was not met. A government spokesman in Amman said Jordan would not give in to the kidnappers. "Jordan will not succumb to any blackmail or pressure whatever the source is," spokesman Nasser Judeh told The Associated Press. Saidat was kidnapped by more than a dozen masked men as he drove to work at the embassy in Baghdad. Afterward, Jordan said it was considering moving its embassy to the Green Zone, the heavily fortified Baghdad neighborhood where the U.S. and British missions are located. Insurgents in Iraq have been trying to prevent Arab governments from sending ambassadors to Baghdad. In July, al-Qaida in Iraq kidnapped and killed the top Egyptian diplomat in Baghdad and two Algerian diplomats. Since then, Jordan, Egypt and other countries have backed off from sending promised ambassadors, citing security worries. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Al-Qaida seems to be a very progressive group of murderers. Breaking the longstanding taboo of killing other muslims, and more interestingly, other arabs. Have they given up on killing Americans altogether? Maybe we are beginning to reach a modus vivendi. We kill them all we want , they only kill other muslims, preferably arab muslims. Yeah, that will work. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-12-25 09:20 |