Insurgents in Iraq released video footage on Tuesday showing a contractor from the United States held hostage at gunpoint in an apparent attempt to put pressure on US authorities before the Iraqi elections at the weekend.
The film showed a man identified as Roy Hallums sitting cross-legged on the floor with an assault rifle pointed at his head. It is the first time Hallums has been seen since he was kidnapped from his compound in Baghdad two months ago.
It is unclear when the video was recorded but the timing of its release is designed to heighten the campaign of intimidation and violence before elections on Sunday.
Hallums (56) worked for a Saudi Arabian food contractor and was seized along with five other people on November 1 last year. Four of the others taken with him have been released but Hallums and one other man, a Filipino, are still missing.
Insurgents in Iraq began kidnapping westerners last spring and have seized around 100 people. Often they have made political demands in return for their victims’ lives, forcing foreign contracting firms to pull out of Iraq or insisting on a US troop withdrawal. Several times ransoms have been secretly paid to secure releases but more than 30 people have been killed, including the Britons Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan.
The film shows Hallums sitting in front of a wall draped in black cloth. He has a thick, grey-flecked beard and as he speaks he plays nervously with plastic cuffs attached to his wrists. ”I have been arrested by a resistance group in Iraq,” he says on the tape. ”I’m asking for help because my life is in danger because it’s been proved that I work for American forces.” Unlike other videos of kidnap victims there were no banners or flags to identify the group that took him hostage. Hallums begs for help but is critical of the US administration.
”I’m not asking for any help from President Bush because I know of his selfishness and unconcern to those who’ve been pushed into this hell-hole,” he says.
”I am asking for help from Arab rulers … so that I can be released as quickly as possible from this definite death. I would remember this favour for the rest of my life, should my life remain.”
His family have spent the past two months trying to raise the profile of his case. His daughter Carrie (29) who lives near Los Angeles, has set up a web page asking for information about her father.
”On November 1 2004 around dinner time, my dad was taken hostage in a hail of gunfire by about 20 armed attackers,” she wrote on the website. ”I can only imagine what my dad was feeling as he was forced from his compound that November day. I don’t want to imagine how he has been treated since that day as I hear of ‘torture houses’ being found in Baghdad that held American hostages. Picturing my dad in those conditions is too much to bear.”
The campaign of violence continued in Iraq on Tuesday with the murder of a senior judge, Qais Hashim Shameri, who was killed with his son in an ambush as they drove to work in eastern Baghdad. It was the latest in a series of high-profile killings in recent weeks that have claimed the lives of the Baghdad governor and the city’s deputy police chief.
A total of 11 Iraqi policemen were killed in Baghdad in two other incidents. In one a police patrol came across insurgents in the eastern Rashad district handing out leaflets warning people away from taking part in the elections. A gun battle broke out and several policemen were killed. In the second incident nearby, police came under fire as they tried to investigate a car they believed was packed with explosives. Seven officers were killed.
Five US soldiers were killed in a sandstorm on Monday when their Bradley fighting vehicle rolled into a canal, the US military said. Two others were injured. – Guardian Unlimited Â