Not that they have any choice in the matter.a point the NYTimes fails to mention.
Bruce Captives, Japanese and British, Plead for End of Occupation By EDWARD WONG New York Times October 28, 2004 BBAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - A frightened Japanese traveler shown on a videotape early Wednesday said he would be beheaded if Japan did not withdraw its troops from Iraq. His captors gave the Japanese government 48 hours to comply. Later, an Arab satellite network broadcast a videotape showing Margaret Hassan, a British-Iraqi aid official kidnapped earlier this month, pleading with the British people and Prime Minister Tony Blair to halt the movement of British troops toward Baghdad. Nearly 800 British soldiers began heading there from the south on Wednesday, in a move intended to allow American troops to prepare for an invasion of the insurgent stronghold of Falluja. It was the third videotape of Ms. Hassan, director of CARE International in Iraq, to be released by her unknown captors. She appeared exhausted, speaking in a soft voice and glancing off-camera at one point. Unlike most hostage tapes released here, no captors appeared. Ms. Hassan also asked that all women prisoners in Iraq be released and that CARE International shut its offices here, according to Al Jazeera, the Arab network, which showed parts of the tape. The aid group suspended its Iraq operations immediately after Ms. Hassan was kidnapped. Last month, the group now holding the Japanese man took two American engineers and a Briton hostage and demanded the release of all women prisoners. The American military said it was detaining only two women, both former scientists in Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, and refused to free them. The group, then called One God and Jihad, led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, beheaded the three men. The Japanese hostage was identified by his government as Shosei Koda. About 550 members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are stationed in Samawa, a relatively quiet southern city. The Japanese government says the troops are here on a strictly humanitarian mission, charged with rebuilding schools and helping improve sewage, drainage and water supplies. Though small, the deployment holds strong diplomatic significance for the Japanese government, which is pushing to transform its Self-Defense Forces into a real military and has lobbied for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Within Japan, there has been strong criticism of the deployment. Mr. Koda, whom Japanese news agencies said had entered Iraq on a bus from Jordan, was shown standing in front of the black banner of Mr. Zarqawi's group, which recently changed its name from One God and Jihad to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Mr. Koda is wearing a white T-shirt and has shoulder-length hair. At one point, the tape cuts to Mr. Koda, kneeling before three men with AK-47's in black outfits. "They asked me why Japanese government broke the law and sent troops to Iraq," Mr. Koda, 24, said in halting English. "They want Japanese government and Koizumi prime minister, they want to withdraw the Japanese troops from Iraq or cut my head." Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he would not meet the demands. "I cannot allow terrorism and cannot bow to terrorism," he said. Later on Wednesday, Al Jazeera showed a videotape of Mr. Koda's father, Masumi Koda, pleading with his son's captors to show mercy. "What I want Shosei's kidnappers to understand is that he is not an activist supporting the stay of the Japanese troops in Iraq nor the American policy there," he said in Japanese with an Arabic voiceover. "On the contrary, his sympathy for the Iraqis and his empathy for their crisis is what made him go to Iraq." In April, during an incendiary two-front uprising in Iraq, insurgents in the Sunni-dominated west seized two Japanese aid workers and a Japanese photographer as they were entering from Jordan. The guerrillas released a video of the three, their hands bound, being threatened with death. The crisis inflamed antiwar advocates in Japan, but after the hostages were released and returned to Japan, they were roundly criticized for stirring up national anxiety. Mr. Zarqawi's group was the first to start the campaign of televised beheadings, which has struck fear into foreigners in this country and helped cripple reconstruction efforts by driving expatriates into the confines of fortified homes and hotels. The group claimed responsibility for the beheading of Nicholas Berg, an American businessman, in May and the decapitation of Kim Sun Il, a South Korean translator, in late June. More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped since last April, most by bandits seeking payment. In other violence, the American military said one soldier was killed and a second injured in a motorcycle bomb attack on Wednesday morning on a convoy by Sindiaya, north of Baghdad. The military put out a statement saying that the weapons buyback program in the volatile Sadr City district of Baghdad had ended with "mixed success." The First Cavalry Division and the Iraqi government started the program to try to disarm the militia of the firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. American and Iraqi officials said last week that they were surprised at the amount of heavy weapons being sold, but expressed concern that the militia was not digging up the large number of homemade bombs it had planted in the streets. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Falluja for this article. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. 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