Kidnappers treated me well: Freed diplomat

The Egyptian diplomat freed from kidnappers in Iraq returned to work in Baghdad today and said he was treated well by the terror group.

Militants freed Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb, the third highest-ranking diplomat at the Egyptian mission in Baghdad, after snatching him from outside a mosque on Friday.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official said militants freed Qutb following intense negotiations.

Qutb arrived at the Egyptian Embassy in Mansour, northwest of Baghdad, early today in a black BMW.

He thanked “all the people concerned in securing his release.”

“Thanks to God, we are going to perform our work at the embassy, there is no problem,” Qutb said outside the embassy.

When asked how he was treated by the militants, Qutb said: “The treatment was very good.”

The militant group, calling itself The Lions of Allah Brigade, said they had seized Qutb to deter his country from giving security aid to Iraq’s government.

An Egyptian official said from Cairo no ransom had been paid, and the kidnappers released Qutb after realising Egypt was not sending troops.

The group said it had freed Qutb because he was a religious man and had good morals, according to a statement sent to the Arab television station Al-Jazeera.

Two other militant groups, however, have threatened to kill four new foreign hostages in Iraq.

A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq announced it had kidnapped two Pakistanis and passed a death sentence against them in part because of Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf’s statements about the possibility of sending troops to Iraq.

The group did not say when it would kill the men, identified by the Pakistani government as Raja Azad, 49, an engineer, and Sajad Naeem, 29, a driver.

Separately, a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Corps announced it was holding two Jordanian drivers and demanded their Jordanian company stop co-operating with US forces and cease doing business in Iraq or they would kill the hostages in 72 hours.

If the company did not comply “it will bear the consequences of the killing and retribution against these two men”, a militant said on a video obtained by Associated Press Television News.

Another video released by a separate group holding seven drivers and threatening to kill them, yesterday extended the deadline for the men. The masked kidnappers did not say how long the deadline had been extended.