Kidnapped South Korean national Kim Sun-Il. Kim's employer told the Yonhap news agency that several other people were abducted by Islamic militants at the same time as the South Korean hostage now being threatened with death.(AFP/File)
Posted on 06/22/2004 8:59:09 AM PDT by TexKat
Amman, Jordan - Jordan said on Tuesday that it was assisting Seoul to win the release of a South Korean held hostage by militants in Iraq as news emerged that kidnappers have extended his execution deadline.
Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said he received a telephone call from his South Korean counterpart, Ban Ki-Moon, on Monday urging Jordan to assist.
"We are doing everything we can, employing all the resources that we have in order to help with this matter," Muasher told reporters. He declined to say what Jordan was doing.
He conceded that "we do not always have any ability" to assist in winning hostage release in Iraq.
He said the Jordanian assistance will be similar to that accorded to Japan in April, when three Japanese held by Iraqi insurgents were released unharmed. It was not known exactly what assistance Jordan gave then to Japanese officials who came to the kingdom to resolve the crisis.
The Korean hostage, Kim Sun-il, 33, was working for a firm supplying the US military in Iraq when he was abducted last Thursday.
His captors, purportedly al-Qaeda-linked militants, had said they would kill him if the South Korean government did not decide by sunset on Monday Iraqi time to cancel its deployment of troops to Iraq.
The deadline passed with South Korea sticking to its dispatch of 3 000 soldiers, beginning in August.
Begging for release
The Dubai-based satellite network Al-Arabiya said on Tuesday that Sun-Il's kidnappers have extended his execution deadline. It provided no details or source for the report.
A South Korean security company later cited an Iraqi go-between in the hostage crisis as saying that Kim was still alive on Tuesday after the deadline had expired. Officials cautioned that the company was still trying to confirm the information.
Earlier on Tuesday, a six-strong South Korean task force arrived in the kingdom to assist in efforts to win the captive's release.
Diplomats at the South Korean Embassy declined to disclose any details on the mission, but said the task force was contacting Jordanian government officials and other dignitaries.
The al-Jazeera satellite station aired footage of an Iraqi man in his hospital bed in the southern town of Nassiriyah appealing to kidnappers to free Sun-Il.
"I am an Iraqi citizen, I am sick and being treated by South Korean doctors who have come to help us and not to fight us. Please release the Korean man because he has not done any harm to us," he said.
Al-Jazeera also showed a Korean woman in Nassiriyah saying in Arabic that Koreans "love" the Iraqi people and they have come to extend humanitarian aid to them.
It also showed clips of a Muslim cleric with a group of South Koreans, including soldiers, reading verses from Islam's holy book, the Quran.
Kidnapped South Korean national Kim Sun-Il. Kim's employer told the Yonhap news agency that several other people were abducted by Islamic militants at the same time as the South Korean hostage now being threatened with death.(AFP/File)
Hmmm....
Sounds to me like the militant Iraqis are asking fer a nukin'. At this point they strengthen the resolve of those who would see them gone, not exactly what the dissident objective is.
By the latest headlines, Al Jazeera now announcing the death of the poor fellow, that doesn't seem to have worked out very well.
Jordan stepping up to help = Jordan looking for $'s from S. Korea?
¿Wasn't the hostage beheaded?
Too late.
They're saying he is dead.
Besides you CAN NOT negociate with these people. If you do, they win.
Jordan's a day late and a dollar short. The poor man has been beheaded. Hope the South Koreans rise up in rage.
I knew they would kill him. I had heard this morning that negotiations were under way. No one can trust those scumbags. I keep seeing this poor South Korean guy begging for his life on tv. I am so fed up with this.
Iraqi Militants Reportedly Behead Korean
CAIRO, Egypt - An Iraqi militant group has beheaded its South Korean hostage, Al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday.
The pan-Arab station said it had received a videotape showing that Kim Sun-il had been executed.
Kim, 33, worked for a South Korean company supplying the U.S. military in Iraq and was abducted last week, according to the South Korean government.
Al-Jazeera, which had not broadcast the tape, said the execution was carried out by the al-Qaida-linked group Monotheism and Jihad.
News of the apparent beheading reached the White House in the midst of a briefing by spokesman Scott McClellan, who said he was not aware of the report.
"That would be horrible news," McCelllan said. "There simply is no justification for those kinds of atrocities that the terrorists carry out. We've seen some of the barbaric nature of the terrorists recently when it comes to an American citizen that was killed in Saudi Arabia and it is a reminder of the true nature of the terrorist."
Kim's kidnappers had initially threatened to kill him at sundown Monday unless South Korea canceled a troop deployment to Iraq. The Seoul government rejected the demand, standing firm with plans to dispatch 3,000 soldiers starting in August.
NKTS, a South Korean security firm doing business in Iraq, told the AP in Baghdad earlier Tuesday that Kim was still alive and that negotiations for his release continued, with the company president expected to arrive in Baghdad from Seoul by Wednesday.
I hope you are right. I'd like to see the perps really suffer. Intensely. (As in, a little beyond "panties on the head" suffering...)
***...hostage by militants in Iraq ...***
Note the PC term, "militants," instead of the truthful name of TERRORISTS.
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