Blindfolded and facing death in Iraq

THE FILM was grainy and the lighting harsh, but the terror on the faces of the three Japanese hostages was clear to see.

One by one they were brought into the bare room and forced to kneel, bound and blindfolded, before the camera as their masked captors, armed with guns and swords, looked on.

One man had his head pulled back and a knife was thrust to his exposed throat. Behind him a woman could be seen sobbing.

The silent film was accompanied by a chilling warning to Japan: withdraw your troops from Iraq within three days, or we will burn the hostages to death.

In a country where shocking images have become almost commonplace, the film sent to the Arabic television channel al-Jazeera yesterday was calculated to disturb to the extreme, and represents a sinister new tactic from those opposed to the presence of the coalition in Iraq.

The three Japanese civilians were among 13 people kidnapped in Iraq yesterday. A British man is also missing, feared kidnapped, after disappearing on Monday.

Two Palestinians also remain missing, while eight South Korean missionaries captured as they entered Iraq from Jordan yesterday were released.

The Japanese hostages - an aid worker and two journalists - were snatched from the south of the country by a previously unheard of group calling themselves Mujahideen Squadrons.

The full video shows the three crouched blindfolded on the floor of a concrete walled room with an iron door. Four masked men dressed in black stand behind them holding automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The gunmen remove the blindfolds and make the Japanese lie one by one on the floor, pointing swords and knives at their chests and throats. The gunmen then show passports identifying the three as Noriaki Imai, 19, Soichiro Koriyama, 32, and Nahoko Takato, 34.

An al-Jazeera announcer read a statement he said came with the video, in which the kidnappers issued a three-day ultimatum for Japan to announce it will withdraw its troops from southern Iraq.

"Three of your sons have fallen into our hands," the announcer read. "We offer you two choices: either pull out your forces, or we will burn them alive. We give you three days starting the day this tape is broadcast."

The Japanese government yesterday refused to withdraw its troops from the country and demanded the safe return of its citizens.

The chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, said the government had yet to confirm the kidnapping but that the video appeared to show three Japanese hostages.

He pledged Tokyo would do "everything in its power" to secure their release if reports of their abduction were true.

Mr Fukuda insisted Japan would stand firm in its commitment to help rebuild Iraq and said there was "no reason" to halt a non-combat mission by about 1,000 Japanese troops supplying water and repairing roads in southern Iraq.

"From the start we’ve been helping the people of Iraq by providing humanitarian support, so there is no reason to pull out," he said.

Mr Fukuda said senior officials were meeting to confirm the kidnapping. "If innocent civilians have been kidnapped as reported, it would be unforgivable and we would demand their immediate release," he said.

"We would do everything in our power to find a way to rescue the three," Mr Fukuda said, declining to say what the Japanese government would do if the hostages were harmed.

Mr Fukuda said Japan’s vice-foreign minister, Ichiro Aisawa, was being dispatched to Amman, Jordan, this morning to co-ordinate the Japanese government’s response.

Japan has about 530 ground troops based in Samawah, part of a total planned deployment of 1,100 soldiers for a mission to purify water and carry out other reconstruction tasks.

The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has been one of the strongest backers of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

In a separate incident, eight South Koreans who set out for Iraq on 5 April were detained by unidentified armed men yesterday, a foreign ministry official said. One of them managed to escape, the official said.

The evangelists from the Christian Council of Korea were soon released, according to the South Korean news reports. South Korea’s foreign ministry in Seoul said it could not confirm they had been freed.

The woman who escaped, Kim Sang Mi, told Korean news media her group had been in two cars on a highway from Amman, Jordan, and was stopped 155 miles west of the Iraqi capital. She said armed men took them captive after checking their passports, suggesting the seizure might be connected to South Korea’s plans to send troops to Iraq.

Meanwhile, media in Israel reported that two Arab residents of Jerusalem were also kidnapped. One of them, who holds an Israeli passport, works for an international aid agency.

Footage from Iranian television, rebroadcast in Israel, showed photos of the men’s documents, including an Israeli driver’s licence, a local health insurance card and a supermarket card. A Georgia driver’s licence belonging to one of the men was also displayed.

In the footage, the men identified themselves as Nabil Razouk, 30, and Ahmed Yassin Tikati, 33.

In Jerusalem, Mr Razouk’s uncle, Anton, said his nephew works for the US Agency for International Development.

A British civilian was also feared kidnapped this week in the southern Iraqi town of An Nasiriyah, the scene of heavy fighting between radical Shiite militiamen and Italian troops.

The official named the man as Gary Teeley, a British contractor. A Foreign Office official in London confirmed Mr Teeley was missing, but would not say what he was doing in Iraq or comment on the manner of his disappearance.

"He is missing. We were first made aware of this on Monday, 5 April. We are in touch with his next of kin and the appropriate military and civilian authorities," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Media reports said Mr Teeley, 37, is married. He is resident in the Middle East and had been working at a US airbase.