WAR: Japanese, British, Canadian, South Korean & Israeli Civilians Held Hostage in Iraq

Arab television station Al Jazeera is claiming that three Japanese civilian workers have been captured in Iraq and are being held hostage by Iraqi insurgents. Making the claim is a group calling itself Saraya al-Mujahideen.
South Korean news agency Yonhap is reporting seven South Koreans on a church mission were being held by an armed Iraqi group. They have since been released.
Also reported captured is British civilian contractor Gary Teely, who was abducted from Nassiriya as confirmed by Coalition officials.
The Haaretz news agency is reporting that Iranian TV has aired video of two Israeli Arabs from Jerusalem now being held captive in Iraq.
Canadian Foreign Affairs report that a civilian humanitarian worker, Fadhi Ihsan Fadel, was abducted in Najaf. Fadel is employed with New York based International Rescue Committee.

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Sky.com

Al Jazeera, within the last few minutes, broadcast video of the hostages and their passports. Video was shown of two men: Noriaki Imai & Soichiro Koriyama, and one woman: Takato Nahoko. They were bound and blindfolded, surrounded by persons armed with handguns and rifles. The full video reveals the hostages screaming as knives and swords are held to their throats and as they are prodded with guns.

The statement included with the tape said, "...Three of your sons have fallen into our hands. We offer you two choices: either pull out your forces, or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters. We give you three days starting the day this tape is broadcast."

Two of the three are journalists, and the other is an aid worker.

Eight South Koreans on a church mission were also captured, and one has since escaped. Rev. Kim Sang-mi, the man who escaped, confirms the capture west of Baghdad but was unable to give further details. The seven have now been released.
The South Korean hostages have been identified as Huh Min Young, Lim Young Seok, Hong Gwang Cheon, Cho Jeong Kyon, Lee Myung Sook, Kim Pil Ja and Byun Kyong Ja.

The Israeli men are identified as hmed Yassin Tikati and Nabil George Yaakob Razuq. Both are civilian aid workers. Ansar a-Din has claimed responsibility for their capture, but have yet to make any demands.

Japanese forces are in Iraq on humanitarian and reconstruction missions. Recent attacks on a Japanese base in the country caused efforts to cease on a temporary basis while the attacks are being investigated.

South Korea has approximately 600 civilian engineers and medics in Iraq.

It is unknown if this is related to earlier reports of Spanish and American soldiers being held hostage. There is speculation that this may be a co-ordinated hostage-taking effort by the insurgent groups.

Related Stories:
Reuters
Scotsman.com
Bloomberg.com
Korea Times
Haaretz.com


[Edited on 8-4-2004 by Banshee]

Ouch!

I bet the Japanese will leave.

There is not many of them there and it was contraversial to send them.

I'm assuming that Japanese humanitarian workers refered to are called that because the Japanese constitution forbids Japanese soldiers going abroad.

But they are basically soldiers but not many it was a token force.

I'm watching the Al Jazeera video right now.

Oh my god. Chilling. Terrifying.

Just seen it myself.

Well they definately have them.

7 South Koreans from a church group reported captured too.
No links yet, hearing it on the news.
This is not good.

I'm not sure exactly what the deal is with Al Jazeera but they seem to have a lot of terrorist ties. I wouldn't doubt it if they set up the whole thing. Considering a majority of their funding comes from the Saudi government you'd think they would cut the crapola with the anti-western slant on everything. Terrorists love Al Jazeera, they'd run the executions of westerners on live TV all day long if they could.

The Japanese are hardly Westeners.

And I'm going to do a bit more research into the aid workers being renamed soldiers, as I'm a tad ignorant on the matter to respond just yet.

Terrorists are great seeker of publicity - especially global. Remember Mrs Thatcher's Policy in the late 80's and 90's of banning the Sinn Fean/IRA from appear on TV the 'Starve them of the oxygen of publicity' policy. Thus it is natural they THEY (the terrorists) seek out Al Jazeera as they are the least likely to comprise them and they now as soon as Al-Jazeera put something out SKY and Foxnews will pirate the signal and broadcast it themselves. In addition it seem that it has more of an impact if is comes via Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera is merely a very convenient tool that the terrorist use. In return Al-Jazeera get to punch above its size on the global New market (in the Gulf War they had numerous one on one interview with US & UK top bods (Tony Blair, Colin Powell etc)

[Edited on 8-4-2004 by Popeye]

[Edited on 8-4-2004 by Popeye]

The Brit was reported missing earlier in the day.

So they've got him too.eh?

The Brits aren't going to withdraw.So I don't like his chances.

popeye- At one point in time I may have agreed with you,

Wonder why Al Jazeera and CNN don't have ties any more? Cause CNN aired a Al Jazeera interview with Bin Laden where he stated he was a terrorist. Al Jazeera got very angry because they didn't consider it news worthy and cut off all ties with CNN.

Smell fishy to you?

Reports are coming in that the full video of the Japanese hostages shows them being mistreated.

I recently saw part of a British documentary (not sure if was for the BBC) of behind the scenes of Al-Jazeera very interesting one of there managers spent most of the war complain to SKY/Foxnews (both owned and controlled by Rupert Murdoch - could say more about his agenda!) for pirating their pictures without asking permission (and paying!). The thing with CNN was that Al-Jazeera offered to share the Osama video (for a price naturally) with CNN as they were affliated to them and did not have a good relationship with Murdoch's channels, but CNN said it was not newsworthy (did not want to pay) but once Al-Jazeera air the video they pirated it and showed anyway.

Al-Jazeera fulfils a useful function for the big news channels (CNN/FoxNews/Sky) as they can show stuff (e.g. pics of coalition prisoners) as being shown on Al-Jazeera, that they would never show them if they had come to them first. Al-Jazeera put in the public domain stuff to sensitive for them to be the first to put out first.

The Iraq tried to pass some stuff to western journalist during the war but their channels would not break it first. Also of note out of all the Major channels the Iraqi only closed down/expelled one channel and that was Al-Jazeera (because it was reporting Coalition successes).

Sorry if this makes me sound like an Al-Jazeera fan (Am not - I think that our news channels fan the fires by givingso much publicity to terrorist both increasing our fears (thus allowing thing to have a greater impact) and encouraging terrorist as a result og the success of publicitiy) but there is a lot more going on and many parties who have their own interest and agendas where Al-Jazeera is concerned

As usual, it appears that no news station is black or white, just varying shades of grey.

Poor japs, there first mission since WWII and this happens. They might leave or the Japs nationalism will just make them commit more troops.

Haven't seen it on the news yet, this is terrible news. I agree John bull1, I think the Japanese will leave, as you said, they haven't got many there.
Anyone got new on the British that's been taken, I haven't looked up on all this much yet.

Two Israeli men now reported held captive.

It is on CNN headline news now. I guess the media was too busy watching Rice.

The Koreans have been released. Unharmed I think.

Yes, thankfully.

>SEOUL (Reuters) - Seven South Koreans who had been kidnapped in Iraq were released unharmed, the country's YTN TV reported on Friday.
It gave no more details and there was no immediate official confirmation.

I hope the others will be released also.

Sky News - A Foreign Office official in London confirmed that Mr Teeley was missing, but would not say what he was doing in Iraq or comment on his disappearance.

Gary Teeley was reported to have been kidnapped earlier this week in Nassiriya.

The Governments are hushing this all up, which could be why it hasn't been made a big deal out of on the news. And we haven't been told why the Koreans were suddenly released either (not that I've seen anyway), and I can't see them just freeing them. Which begs the question, what have we given them in return?