RI hostages deliver militants' warning
RI hostages deliver militants' warning
Reuters, Amman
Two Indonesian television reporters who had been held captive by Iraqi guerrillas said their kidnappers asked them after their release to warn foreign journalists not to come to the conflict- ridden country.
"They told us we should tell journalists they should not enter Iraq and that it is not a safe place for them and they also said they were dissatisfied by reports that discredited them," Meutya Hafid, 26, told reporters after her arrival in Amman from the Iraqi border with cameraman Budiyanto, 38, a day after their release.
The reporters who work for Indonesia's Metro TV said they were abducted by three men after their car stopped for fuel at a petrol station near Ramadi, a guerrilla stronghold west of Baghdad on their way to Amman after a reporting assignment.
They were then taken to a secret hideout in the desert almost two hours away from where they were kidnapped.
Meutya said she and her colleague were comforted by repeated assurances from their kidnappers.
"They did not hurt us in any way. They were caring and somehow we trusted them. They told us we have nothing against you. We are mujahideen (Muslim holy warriors) fighting for Islam and we don't want money," Meutya added.
A little-known group of Iraqi insurgents, calling themselves the Mujahideen Army, had issued a video tape demanding Indonesia explain what the journalists were doing in Iraq.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has been a strong critic of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of majority Shi'ite Iraq. Almost all Indonesian Muslims are Sunnis.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had appealed to the insurgents to release the pair, saying they were working in a fellow Muslim country in a professional capacity.
More than 120 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the past year and at least a third have been killed.
Last October, the rebel Islamic Army in Iraq kidnapped two Indonesian women working as maids before releasing them several days later. An Indonesian engineer was shot dead in an ambush in the northern Iraq city of Mosul last August.