Masked Iraq Gunmen Threaten to Behead Pakistani

[BEER980]

Wonder who is next on the list?

By Miral Fahmy
DUBAI (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen in Iraq have kidnapped a Pakistani driver and are threatening to behead him within three days unless Iraqi prisoners are released, Al Arabiya television reported Sunday.

"This man was taken after an attack on a U.S. base in Balad," said a masked gunman on a tape broadcast by the Dubai-based television channel.

"You must release our prisoners held near the U.S. base in Balad, in Dujail, in Yethrib, in Samarra and near Abu Ghraib. You have three days from the date of this recording and after that we will behead him. We have warned you."

Balad, Dujail, Yethrib and Samarra are towns north of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib is a Baghdad jail that was the scene of much-publicized abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces.

The gunmen did not say whether they were affiliated to Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, a group headed by al Qaeda-linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which has carried out previous kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq.

The tape showed three men, their faces covered by checkered Arab headdresses, standing behind the crouching Pakistani, who displayed an identity card from U.S. firm Kellogg, Brown and Root which works with the U.S. military. On the tape, the Pakistani man urged President Pervez Musharraf -- a key ally in the U.S. war on terror -- to shut down Pakistan's embassy in Iraq. His comments were translated into Arabic by Arabiya.

The Pakistani was the latest foreigner to be taken hostage by Iraqi militants. Jama'at al Tawhid and Jihad -- in a tape broadcast by Al Jazeera television Saturday -- said it had kidnapped three Turkish contractors. It also threatened to behead them within 72 hours if Turkey did not withdraw all companies working with the U.S.-led occupation forces.

Zarqawi's group also said it had beheaded South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il last week after Seoul rejected demands to pull military medics and engineers out of Iraq and drop plans to send more troops. The group also decapitated U.S. contractor Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month.

U.S. officials say Zarqawi is their top fore and "number one target" in Iraq. His group has claimed responsibility for many suicide bombings and assassinations of Iraqi officials in the run up to June 30, the date when an interim Iraqi government is set to formally take over from U.S.-led occupation authorities.

Source

[GalvestonDuck]

Could this be the same Pakistani hostage? Maybe there's just conflicting information about his nationality and occupation?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... ne_hostage

Or is it actually two different hostages?

[BEER980]

I have been trying to run down both stories and I am not sure what the true story is. I think we have two stories about two hostages taken at the same time from the same area. So it looks like we have 3 Turks held by one group, 1 US Marine held by another and the Paki held by still another.

[GalvestonDuck]

Yup, it appears to be two separate hostages. Yahoo has updated and has a new story:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... _ea/iraq_1