Hostage beheaded after Seoul refuses demands

An Iraqi militant group believed linked to al-Qaida beheaded a South Korean hostage after the Seoul government refused to bow to the terrorists’ demands to cancel plans to send its troops to Iraq.

“The South Korean government reconfirms its position that it will send troops to Iraq to help reconstruction, and as a humanitarian assistant,” said Shin Bong-kil, the main spokesman of the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

But he said all non-essential civilian nationals would be evacuated from Iraq as soon as possible.

Speaking after a 90-minute emergency meeting of the National Security Council, Shin condemned the killing of hostage Kim Sun-il, as an act of “anti-humanitarian terror”.

“To prevent similar acts of terror from happening again to South Korean nationals, the government has decided to take measures to quickly evacuate all South Korean nationals in Iraq, except those who are absolutely necessary,” he said.

On Tuesday, the government said it was evacuating South Korean businessmen, and that the 22 who remained would be out of Iraq by early July.

The Arab satellite television channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape showing the 33-year-old kneeling before five masked and armed men, one of whom wore a large knife in his belt.

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 the damned America.”

The video as broadcast by Al-Jazeera did not show Kim being executed, and the broadcaster did not say when Kim 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,” Kimmitt said in a statement. “The man had been beheaded, and the head was recovered with the body.”

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

In a traditional funeral rite, they laid out watermelon and other fruit on a cloth before a photograph of Kim.

A banner hanging in the street outside their home read: “The South Korean people have never fired a single bullet at Iraqis. Please send back Kim Sun-il alive.”

Al-Jazeera, which said it received a videotape showing that Kim had been executed, said the execution was carried out by the al-Qaida-linked group Monotheism and Jihad.

Kim’s kidnappers had threatened to kill him at sundown on Monday unless South Korea cancelled a troop deployment to Iraq. The South Korean government rejected the demand, standing firm with plans to dispatch 3,000 soldiers starting in August.

More than 600 South Korean military medics and engineers are already deployed in Iraq.

In a dispatch from Baghdad, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted an “informed source” as saying that negotiations with the kidnappers collapsed over the Seoul government’s refusal to drop its plan to send troops.

“As a condition for starting negotiations for 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.”

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,” the president said.

The grisly killing was reminiscent of the decapitation of American businessman Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded last month on a videotape posted on an Al-Qaida-linked website by the Monotheism and Jihad group, which claimed responsibility for Kim’s death. Berg was wearing the same orange prison-style clothing as Kim.

In Saudi Arabia, American helicopter technician Paul M. Johnson Jr., 49, was kidnapped by al-Qaida militants who followed through on a threat to kill him if the kingdom did not release its al-Qaida prisoners.

An al-Qaida group claiming responsibility posted an internet message that showed photographs of Johnson’s severed head.

After the additional troops arrive, South Korea will become the third largest troop contributor after the United States and Britain. The government has advertised the mission as humanitarian, although many South Koreans oppose it.

Dozens of foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since an upsurge of violence in April.

Most have been freed although three Americans -- one soldier and two civilian truck drivers -- remain missing after their convoy was ambushed in April.

Four Italians were kidnapped April 12 and one of them, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, was killed on a video sent to Al-Jazeera but never broadcast.

US special operations troops rescued the three other Italians and a Polish engineer on June 8 south of Baghdad.