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Iraq

Kidnappers offer 'last chance' for 4 hostages

BAGHDAD - Kidnappers holding four Christian peace activists gave U.S. and Iraqi authorities a "last chance" to release all detainees in Iraq, threatening to kill the hostages if their demands were not met in a tape broadcast Saturday.

At least 22 people were killed in scattered violence across the country, including a U.S. soldier in a roadside bombing in Baghdad and 10 Iraqis in a bombing at a candy store in a mostly Shiite town south of the capital.

The hostages - two Canadians, an American and a Briton - were shown on the tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera looking gaunt and standing near a white wall in what appeared to be a house, then in another shot in which they were seated and talking, but their voices were not heard.

The pan-Arab station's announcer said the group, the Swords of Righteousness Brigades, issued a statement warning it was the "last chance" for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to "release all Iraqi prisoners in return of freeing the hostages."

"Otherwise, their fate will be death," the statement added, without mentioning a deadline.

The broadcast of the video, dated Jan. 21, capped a week in which two German engineers were abducted in the northern industrial city of Beiji, and the U.S. military released five Iraqi women who had been in military custody - a move demanded by the kidnappers of American reporter Jill Carroll to spare her life. The military said the prisoner release was routine and not in response to the ultimatum.

Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va.; and Norman Kember, 74, of London, were seized Nov. 26 as they were working with Christian Peacemaker Teams, which investigates allegations of abuse against Iraqi prisoners.

The video, which could not be independently authenticated, was the third released showing the four activists in captivity, including one that threatened their lives unless all prisoners were freed in Iraq by Dec. 10.

A Sunni Arab political leader, meanwhile, criticized Friday's police crackdowns on Sunni neighborhoods in southern Baghdad, which saw about 60 people detained and three killed, apparently by insurgents.

"We condemn the treacherous and terrorist acts that have targeted and killed dozens of innocent people who were only guilty of rejecting the (U.S.-led) occupation," Khalaf al-Ilyan said at a press conference.

Also, gunmen in central Baghdad shot to death prominent professor Abdul-Razzaq al-Naas, a Shiite who often appeared on Arab TV talk shows to discuss Iraqi politics, police said. During a recent appearance on a panel show, Naas spoke out strongly against the government's failure to improve security and the economy.

Separately, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw raised the topic of troop withdrawals, saying Britain hopes to lower its troop numbers but only once Iraq's government is secure.

"We hope to do some of that during the course of this year," Straw said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, without specifying an exact date. Some 8,500 British troops are in Iraq.

Today, the troubled Saddam Hussein trial resumes with a new judge and with international human rights groups saying political interference is threatening the tribunal's independence.

Hussein and his seven co-defendants are charged in the deaths of about 140 Shiite Muslims in the Shiite town of Dujail in 1982.

[Last modified January 29, 2006, 01:28:20]