KUWAIT, 6 July 2004 — A Pakistani man kidnapped and then freed by militants in Iraq says his captors told him they planned to behead him. “It was a horrible experience,” Amjad Hafeez told Kuwait’s Arab Times.
“As I could not understand the Arabic dialect that they spoke, we conversed in sign language. I was told I would be beheaded after three days if their demands were not met.”
Amjad, who was a driver for a company working with the US-led occupation forces, was freed Friday after being held for eight days.
Described as looking “frail but happy”, he said he had been beaten by his captors for two days before they asked about his religion. When he told them he was a Muslim, they asked him to recite prayers.
“The beatings then stopped,” said Amjad, who was due to leave for Pakistan later. “They allowed me to pray five times a day although they themselves never prayed with me.”
He said the Arabic dialect spoken by his captors was not a local one, and that he had been kept blindfolded during his entire captivity, except for prayers and meals.
He said he had walked out of his employers’ camp at Balad, 120 km northeast of Baghdad, without permission “for fresh air” after being cooped up there for a whole year. As he did so, a car came up behind him and some men pushed him in.
Amjad was employed by the US firm Kellogg Brown & Root, which works with the US military in Iraq and employs numerous local sub-contractors.
His captors, who had demanded the release of Iraqis being held by US-led coalition forces, said they were releasing him because of appeals by his mother and because he was a Muslim.
