/ 8 July 2005

Egyptian envoy to Iraq killed, says al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda in Iraq on Thursday killed a kidnapped Egyptian envoy after releasing a video of him wearing a blindfold. An internet posting showed Ihab al-Sherif (51) identifying himself as the head of Egypt’s diplomatic mission in Baghdad and confirming that he previously worked at Egypt’s embassy in Israel.

There was no footage of his killing but on Thursday night the Egyptian foreign ministry confirmed the death of its ambassador designate, Italy’s Ansa news agency reported.

A statement accompanying the video said: ”We announce in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq that the verdict of God against the ambassador of the infidels, the ambassador of Egypt, has been carried out. Thank God.”

The statement said Sherif, due to be promoted to ambassador, had confessed to Cairo’s ”infidel nature”, an apparent reference to Egypt’s crackdown on Islamic radicals and its decision to forge diplomatic ties with Iraq.

”Our sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is determined to stand up to traitors and crusaders and all those who stand with them, and we vow to all the dictatorial nations that Iraq is not safe for infidels because God has empowered the mujahideen,” it said.

Under the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, al-Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest bombings and hostage murders, including last year’s beheading of the British engineer Ken Bigley.

Sherif’s government and Sunni Arab clerics had pleaded for mercy. His father collapsed when told that his son had been abducted.

Gunmen snatched Sherif last Saturday when he stopped to buy a newspaper near his Baghdad home. Two days later Pakistan’s ambassador and a diplomat from Bahrain escaped similar ambushes.

The internet statement said the group had delayed claiming responsibility for Sherif’s kidnap to boost its chances of catching other diplomats.

The goal was to isolate Baghdad, and as a result Pakistan’s ambassador moved to Jordan.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon confirmed that five American citizens were in detention on suspicion of involvement in the insurgency or kidnapping.

One of the detainees is known to be Cyrus Kar, a 44-year-old Iranian-American filmmaker and US navy veteran whose family said he was in Iraq to make an archaeological documentary around Babylon. The other detainees are reported to be a Jordanian-American and three Iraqi-Americans, all men.

The Pentagon refused to give the names of the Americans being held, saying it was policy not to identify detainees. However, a defence official confirmed that an Iranian-American had been detained along with two Americans on May 17, when the vehicle they were in was stopped.

”Upon a search, dozens of washing machine timers were found. These timers are frequently being used in improvised explosive devices,” the official said. ”The detainees were transferred that very same day to multinational forces, and are now in a theatre-level detention centre [a prison in Iraq].”

Kar’s family told the Los Angeles Times that he had been in a taxi with an Iraqi cameraman in Baghdad when they were detained along with the taxi driver.

Relatives claimed that the FBI had searched his flat in Los Angeles, seizing computer drives and personal files, and cleared him of suspicion. They also said he had passed a lie detector test, but was still being held incommunicado and without charge.

Since then Kar has made three telephone calls to his relatives. His aunt, Parvin Modarress, said she asked him if he had been tortured.

”He said, ‘Not now. At the beginning. Where I am now is like a country club compared to where I was’,” she told the Los Angeles Times. The defence department denied there had been any mistreatment.

In Jordan meanwhile, Saddam Hussein’s principal lawyer announced he was leaving the legal team, claiming that American lawyers were trying to control its strategy and to suppress his broader criticism of the US-led occupation of Iraq. Ziad al-Khasawneh told the Associated Press that he was stepping down ”because some American lawyers in the defence team want to take control of it and isolate their Arab counterparts”.

Khasawneh, an outspoken Arab nationalist who has denounced the occupation, said that two American defence lawyers, Curtis Doebbler and Ramsey Clark, were ”upset with my statements and have often asked me to refrain from criticising the American occupation of Iraq and the US-backed Iraqi government”.

He said that Saddam’s eldest daughter, Raghad, preferred the Americans and non-Arabs on the defence team ”because she thinks they will win the case and free her father”. – Guardian Unlimited Â