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Wednesday, Jun 23, 2004

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International

Iraqi militants behead South Korean

BAGHDAD, JUNE 22. An Iraqi militant group believed linked to the Al-Qaeda beheaded a South Korean hostage after the Seoul Government refused to remove its soldiers from Iraq, Al-Jazeera television said on Tuesday. The South Korean Foreign Ministry has confirmed the killing.

The Arab satellite television channel broadcast a tape showing Kim Sun-il, 33, kneeling before five masked and armed men, one of whom wore a large knife in his belt. Mr. Kim, wearing an orange prison jump suit and matching blindfold, heaved his shoulders, his mouth gaping open as if sobbing and gasping for air. "We warned you, but you refused," one of the kidnappers said, reading from a written statement. "We had warned you, and this is what you brought upon yourselves. Enough lying and deceit. Your Army is here not for the Iraqi people but for damned America."

The video did not show Mr. Kim being executed, and the broadcaster did not say when he was killed.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Coalition Deputy Operations Chief, said the body of an Asian male was found west of Baghdad on Tuesday evening. "It appears that the body had been thrown from a vehicle," Brig. Gen. Kimmitt said in a statement. "The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body."

The U.S. President, George W. Bush, condemned the beheading as "barbaric" and said he remained confident that South Korea would go ahead with plans to send thousands of troops to Iraq. "The free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric people," he said.

The killing was reminiscent of the decapitation of the American businessman, Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded last month on a videotape posted on an Al-Qaeda-linked website by the Monotheism and Jihad group, which claimed responsibility for Mr. Kim's death.

In Seoul, the South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Mr. Kim's body was found by the American military on Tuesday between Baghdad and Fallujah. The South Korean Embassy in Baghdad identified the body from a picture sent by e-mail by the Americans, he said.

Mr. Kim worked for a South Korean company supplying the U.S. military in Iraq, according to the South Korean Government. He was believed abducted several weeks ago.

After news of the death broke, South Korean television showed distraught family members weeping and rocking back and forth with grief at their home in the port city of Busan.

In a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera late on Sunday, the kidnappers asked the South Korean Government to withdraw its troops or they would "send you the head of this Korean, and we will follow it with the heads of your other soldiers." The Seoul Government said on Monday that it would go ahead with plans to send 3,000 troops to Iraq despite the militants' ultimatum.

In a dispatch from Baghdad, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted an "informed source" as saying that negotiations with the militants collapsed over the Government's refusal to drop its plan to send troops. "As a condition for starting negotiations for Mr. Kim's release, the kidnappers demanded that South Korea announce that it would retract its troop dispatch plan," the source was quoted as saying. "This was a condition the South Korean Government could not accept. As the talks bogged down, the kidnappers apparently resorted to an extreme measure."

— AP

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