Iraqi militants threaten to behead south Korean
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-21 08:56

Iraqi militants threatened on Monday to behead a South Korean hostage within 24 hours to try to stop Seoul deploying 3,000 troops to Northern Iraq, according to a videotape aired on Arabic television station Al Jazeera.

A banner in the background of footage showing 33-year-old Korean businessman Kim Sun-il pleading for his life named the group as Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, the name of the militant group led by al Qaeda operative in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"Please get out of here, here, here. I don't want to die," Al Jazeera showed the Korean, pleading desperately.

Masked men stand around a South Korean hostage in a videotape aired on the Arabic television station Al Jazeera on June 20, 2004.  [Reuters]

The threat to kill the hostage came less than 24 hours after a US air strike on the town of Falluja on what the US military said was a safe house used by militants led by Zarqawi.

Iraqi officers said women and children but no foreign Muslim militants were among the 22 people killed in the attack.

The raid shattered a lull in Falluja and fueled tensions before the formal end of Iraq's US-led occupation on June 30.

Insurgents, believed to include loyalists of Saddam Hussein, Sunni nationalists and foreign militants, have sown havoc ahead of the handover to a new interim Iraqi government and targeted Iraq's oil industry, lifeline to the country's reconstruction.

On an optimistic note, Iraqi officials said Sunday engineers had finished repairing one of two sabotaged oil pipelines in southern Iraq and officials expect partial exports to resume Monday.

But the threat to the South Korean hostage underscored the difficulties facing foreign nationals working in Iraq.

South Korea identified the hostage as Kim and President Roh Moo-hyun's National Security Council held an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the apparent kidnapping.

Iraqi militants threatened to behead the hostage if Seoul does not cancel plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq, according to the tape aired on Arabic television station Al Jazeera.

Beheading prisoners or cutting their throats has been a shock tactic among al Qaeda militants for some time. Last month, Zarqawi's group beheaded American hostage Nick Berg in Iraq.

F

A man identified as South Korean Kim Soong Il, is seen in this image taken from an undated but recent video obtained by Al-Jazeera television station Sunday, June 20, 2004. In the video, a group calling itself Monotheism and Jihad said that Korea had 24 hours to meet its demands of the withdrawal of Korean troops from Iraq, or they would kill Kim Soong Il. [AP]

riday, al Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia beheaded American hostage Paul Johnson.

South Korea, which already has some non-combat troops deployed in Iraq, said Friday it would start to deploy 3,000 troops to the Arbil area in early August to help rebuild the northern Kurdish region.

"We ask you to withdraw your forces from our land and not to send any more troops, and if not we'll send you this Korean's head," one of a group of armed, masked men standing around the South Korean man said in the videotape.

The group said South Korea had 24 hours from Sunday night to withdraw its decision to send troops to Iraq, al Jazeera said.

EXECUTION

Meanwhile, the head of the Iraqi tribunal that will try Saddam said Sunday the former dictator could face the death penalty if he is convicted of war crimes.

Salem Chalabi, the tribunal head, told the British Broadcasting Corporation's "Breakfast with Frost" program that if a suspension of capital punishment authorized by the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, was lifted, then Saddam could face the death penalty if convicted.

Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi defended the U.S. air strike on Falluja.

"We know that a house which had been used by terrorists had been hit. We welcome this hit on terrorists anywhere in Iraq," he told a news conference.

But Falluja's police chief and a senior officer in the Falluja Brigade in charge of security in the fiercely anti-U.S. town denied foreign fighters loyal to Zarqawi, a Jordanian described by the Americans as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, had operated from the house.

The U.S. military allowed the Falluja Brigade, led by former Iraqi army officers, to take over security in the town under a truce last month that ended battles between U.S. Marines and insurgents in which hundreds of people were killed.

Since the truce, Falluja has been quieter, although the U.S. military said a Marine was killed in action Saturday in western Iraq -- the 615th U.S. combat death since the invasion.

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