BAGHDAD, 28 July 2004 — A freed Egyptian diplomat said yesterday he was taken hostage because militants were opposed to Cairo’s ties with the Iraqi caretaker government, refusing to classify his captors as common criminals. Mohamed Mamdouh Qutb, 49, who was released late Monday after a 72-hour ordeal, said his kidnappers, who called themselves the Lions of Allah, “wanted to send a message to the Egyptian government”.
“They wanted to say they were not satisfied about the improving relations between Egypt and the new Iraqi government,” he told reporters in Baghdad. Qutb, the No. 3 at Egypt’s mission in Baghdad, was the first diplomat seized since Iraq’s foreign hostage crisis erupted in April. “I don’t know anything about the Lions of Allah, but these people are Islamists, definitely, they are not common criminals,” he said. The men refused any kind of ransom for his release, he added.
In a video broadcast on the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera, the group said Qutb had been snatched in response to what it described as an offer by the Egyptian government to provide “security expertise” to Iraq.
Cairo said it had no intention of sending troops, although caretaker Iraqi Premier Iyad Allawi urged Egypt not to buckle to the kidnappers’ demands.
