Japan was making arrangements on Sunday to fly the decapitated body of a 24-year-old Japanese tourist killed in Iraq to Kuwait for his return home, a senior Japanese official told reporters in Jordan.
”The body of Mr [Shosei] Koda is scheduled to be transferred to Kuwait,” Japan’s Senior Vice-Foreign Minister Shuzen Tanigawa told a dawn news conference in Amman, where he has been heading a hostage task force since Thursday.
He said he expects the body to be flown by the United States military to Kuwait, without giving details.
”I will leave Amman for Kuwait this afternoon [Sunday] to accompany the body of Mr Koda to Japan as early as possible. We are doing the planning work with the Iraqi government and US forces,” he said.
Tanigawa described as ”regrettable” Koda’s slaying by an Islamist group that had threatened to kill him unless Japan pulled out its 550 troops operating in Iraq — a demand rejected by Tokyo.
”Mr Koda became a victim of terrorism at an early age and away from home. I feel as if my heart will break,” Tanigawa said.
Earlier in Tokyo, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told a news conference that a head and a decapitated body with bound hands and feet found wrapped in a US flag on Saturday in Baghdad were the remains of Koda.
”Unfortunately we have confirmed that the body is that of Shosei Koda,” Machimura said.
”We are very angry at this extremely cruel act of terrorism in which private individuals have taken a life. We cannot forgive this incident,” he added.
Koda was the first Japanese national killed in Iraq amid a wave of kidnappings by Islamist groups.
In April, militants kidnapped three Japanese aid workers and two journalists, who were released unharmed after days of mediation while Japan set up a task force at its embassy in Jordan.
But the group that claimed the capture of Koda was one of the most violent in Iraq, led by Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Osama bin Laden supporter blamed for a slew of bombings, killings and kidnappings.
Zarqawi has been sentenced to death by a Jordanian military tribunal in April in connection with the murder of a US diplomat in Amman in October 2002. — Sapa-AFP