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.