Agencies  --  Arab News

BAGHDAD, 12 April 2004 — The captors of three Japanese civilians will start killing them from today if Tokyo does not begin pulling its troops out of Iraq, a self-described Iraqi mediator said yesterday, quashing reports that they were about to be freed.

The captors are “giving the Japanese government a 24-hour ultimatum which expires at 5:00 p.m. (1300 GMT), not open to extension, after which they will execute a first hostage,” Mezher Al-Delaimi, who was identified as head of the League for the Defense of Iraqis’ Rights, told AFP by telephone.

“The death sentence will be applied to the others 12 hours later” unless Japan meets a number of conditions, chiefly to pull its troops out of Iraq, Delaimi said.

The “Iraqi resistance” is demanding that the Japanese government “spell out its official position on the Iraqi people’s cause, apologize to the Iraqis and withdraw Japanese troops from Iraqi territory,” the self-styled mediator said.

Delaimi had first made the announcement on Arab television channel Al-Jazeera.

He told AFP that negotiations were ongoing and that hostages were “in good health and well treated.”

Delaimi said he “spoke with US officials and I hope that the Americans and the Japanese government will respond positively to the captors’ demands.”

He said resistance fighters also wanted Japanese Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Ichiro Aisawa, now in Amman as Tokyo’s point-man for the crisis, to visit the rebel town of Fallujah west of Baghdad to “see the massacres perpetrated by US forces” there.

A diplomat at the Japanese Embassy in Amman questioned about the statement told AFP, “We are still to confirm this report”.

He declined to comment on the status of Delaimi.

But a spokesman for Iraqi Sunni clerics cast doubt on Delaimi’s remarks and reiterated a call for the release of the Japanese trio.

“I don’t know where he (Delaimi) got his information and if he really contacted those holding the Japanese,” Mohammad Bashar Al-Faidhi, a spokesman for the Council of Muslim Ulema in Iraq, told Al-Jazeera.

Al-Jazeera had reported Saturday night that the captors from the “Mujahedeen Brigades” announced in a statement that they responded to a request from the Council of Muslim Ulema to free the trio and would do so within 24 hours.

“We in the Council of Muslim Ulema still urge the brethren holding the Japanese (to release them) and ask them to live up to their promise,” Faidhi said.

The whereabouts and condition of volunteer workers Noriaki Imai, 18, and Nahoko Takato, 34, and 32-year-old photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, remained unknown yesterday.

Kyodo news agency reported late yesterday that an unidentified negotiator had told the government in Tokyo that the three were safe.

Meanwhile, eight foreign men described as truck drivers who were held hostage in Iraq have been released, a masked man said on a videotape yesterday.

“We have released them in response to a call from the Council of Muslim Ulema...after we were sure that they will not deal with the occupation forces again,” the man said in the tape on Al-Jazeera, which showed the hostages.

They were three Pakistanis, two Turks, an Indian, a Nepali and one Filipino.