Al-Qaida group 'to kill four hostages'

An al-Qaida-led insurgent group said in a website statement today that it had decided to kill four kidnapped Russian Embassy workers after a deadline for meeting its demands passed.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council said Moscow failed to meet its demands for a full withdrawal of troops from the war-torn region of Chechnya and that a 48-hour deadline set in a statement issued Monday had run out.

“Therefore, the Islamic court of the Mujahedeen Shura Council decided to implement God’s law sentencing them (the four Russians) to death,” the group said in a statement on an Islamic militant website where it often posts its statements.

The Shura Council is a grouping of seven Iraqi insurgent groups, most prominent among them al Qaida in Iraq, which yesterday claimed responsibility for the murder of two kidnapped US soldiers.

The statement did not state that the Russians were killed. The four embassy workers were abducted on June 3 in an attack on their car in which a fifth Russian was killed.

The Americans’ murder was the first act of violence claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq since its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a June 3 airstrike. A Shura Council statement yesterday said al Qaida in Iraq’s new leader, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, beheaded the two Americans.

The claims may aim to show that al Qaida in Iraq remains strong and will continue in the path laid down by al-Zarqawi, who masterminded kidnappings and killings of Westerners in Iraq – beheading two Americans with his own hand – as well as a bloody campaign of suicide bombings.

His hostage victims included Egypt’s top diplomat in Iraq and two senior Algerian diplomats, part of a campaign to prevent Arab nations from sending ambassadors in support of the new Iraqi government.

The Shura Council claimed responsibility for the abduction of the four Russians in a statement on Monday, giving Moscow 48 hours to pull out of Chechnya and release Islamic militants from its prisons. It produced no photos or videos of the men to prove it was holding them.

The Russian Foreign Ministry called for the captives’ immediate release and said “the abduction of citizens of a country that is energetically helping to restore peace in Iraq” cannot be justified.

In today’s statement, the council said the Russian government “did not respond to our conditions for releasing its diplomats and gave no value to its citizens, only calling for their release while continuing its war against Islam and its people. “

It said the decision to kill the four came “in revenge for our brothers everywhere with whose blood the Russians’ hands have been stained” and would be “an example for those who might follow them and dare to defy the mujahedeen (holy warriors)”.