Hostages executed in Iraq

2004-07-28 22:28

Baghdad - A militant group holding two Pakistani contractors hostage said on Wednesday it had killed the men, but freed their Iraqi driver, according to the Pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera.

The group, calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, announced in a video on Monday it had kidnapped two Pakistanis working for United States forces and had sentenced them to death because their country was discussing sending troops to Iraq.

In a new videotape sent to Al-Jazeera on Wednesday, the men said they had carried out their threat, the station reported.

The newsreader said the video showed the corpses of the two men, but the station declined to show the footage.

The kidnapped men were identified by Pakistan as engineer Raja Azad, 49, and driver Sajad Naeem, 29, both of whom worked for the Kuwait-based al-Tamimi group in Baghdad.

The group said it had released the Iraqi driver, Omar Khaled Selman, after it was clear he had been duped by the Pakistanis.

The militants released a video on Wednesday showing Selman describing his ordeal.

"After interrogation, they charged us all with the death penalty, and then they postponed mine and carried out the death penalty on the two Pakistanis because it was clear they were spies," he said.

"After further interrogation with me, they found out that I was only a driver and they released me," he said on the video broadcast on Al-Jazeera.

- AP