Woman hostage killed in Iraq
2004-11-16 20:07
Baghdad - Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said on Tuesday it had received a videotape showing the slaying of a woman believed to be British hostage Margaret Hassan.
Jihad Ballout, Al-Jazeera spokesperson, said the station received the tape a few days, ago but was not sure of its authenticity.
The station planned to broadcast parts of the video later on Tuesday.
He said the woman on the video was blindfolded.
"We invited British diplomatic officials to come and view it in Doha, Qatar, with the aim of helping us ascertain whether it was Mrs Hassan or not," he told The Associated Press in Cairo.
"It's now likely that the image depicts Mrs Hassan," he said.
Hassan, an Irish-British-Iraqi citizen who heads Care International in Iraq, was abducted on October 19 from her car in Baghdad.
No group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping and there was no sign on a previous brief broadcast of any banner identifying who held her.
On November 2, Al-Jazeera reported that Hassan's kidnappers had threatened to turn her over to al-Qaeda-linked militants notorious for beheading hostages unless Britain agreed within 48 hours to pull its troops from Iraq.
- AP