Italian Hostage Killed in Iraq

[conjur]

 

[InfectedMushroom]

Yahoo Story Link

 

[maddogchen]

Sad...

An Italian hostage in Iraq (news - web sites) was killed and his death recorded on a videotape received by Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based network said Wednesday.

The network aired a short segment of the video showing the four Italian hostages sitting on the ground, holding up their passports and surrounded by armed men. Al-Jazeera said the death of one of the Italians is captured on the tape as well but that it declined to broadcast the footage.

The network refused to say how it received the tape.

The four Italian security guards were abducted Monday. Three were working for a U.S.-based company while a fourth was employed by a Seychelles-based firm, Italian officials said.

An Iranian delegation had been headed to Baghdad to try to win their release.

The tape was accompanied by a statement from a previously unknown group calling itself the Green Battalion, which threatened to "kill the three remaining Italian hostages one after the other, if their demands are not met," Al-Jazeera said.

The statement, read by an Al-Jazeera anchor, accused Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of caring more about his "masters in the White House than his own people."

The group demanded the withdrawal U.S. forces from Iraq "according to a timetable" and that Berlusconi "apologize for his wrongs against Islam." It also called for the release of all religious clerics being held in Iraq.

In Rome, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said late Wednesday that the government had no confirmation of the killing.

"Obviously, we hope this news turns out to be false," he said on Italian television. "The kidnappers are, as you said, a group of bandits, not tied organically to any group."

Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout would not say how the station received the tape. "Al-Jazeera does not comment on these details."

The station has said previous tapes sent by militant groups have been dropped off at their office in Baghdad.

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[Bitek]

Sh!t.


My biggest fear in this is that this will spur the other kidnappers to kill their hostages too.....


fubar

 

[Perknose]

[The group demanded the withdrawal U.S. forces from Iraq "according to a timetable" and that Berlusconi "apologize for his wrongs against Islam." It also called for the release of all religious clerics being held in Iraq.

Apologize? Apparently, these murderers don't know Berlusconi all that well:

The Western civilisation is superior, Mr Berlusconi added, because "it has at its core - as its greatest value - freedom, which is not the heritage of Islamic culture". The Italian prime minister predicted that "the West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1400 years ago".