WARSAW, 21 November 2004 — A Polish woman hostage abducted in Iraq more than three weeks ago was yesterday back home after being released by her captors who she said had treated her well.

Teresa Borcz-Halifa, 54, married to an Iraqi and resident in Iraq for 30 years, was kidnapped from her home in Baghdad on Oct. 28. She told a press conference just after her release was announced by Prime Minister Marek Belka that she had been “well-treated” by her kidnappers.

“I was held in a small, very clean room, newly painted. I was well fed, and I was given plenty of water and toiletries.”

Belka refused to comment on the circumstances of her release which came just four days after British-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan was feared to have been killed by her abductors in Iraq, triggering shock and outrage around the world.

An official at the Polish Embassy in Baghdad said: “I am grateful to all the institutions that cooperated in this endeavor and spared no effort for success.”

She had been abducted by the Abu Bakr Siddik Al-Salafia group which had been calling for the release of all Iraqi women prisoners held by the US-led coalition in Iraq.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian truck driver who was held hostage in Iraq said yesterday that he heard his kidnappers talk about two captive French journalists and believed they were kept in the same house as him.

Ahmad Abdel Aziz Mohammad, 47, told Reuters in Amman that he had not met Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, who have been missing since August. But he said he had heard his captors say they were in good health and being well treated.

“They were an Islamic group from Fallujah. I heard them talk about them (the two French journalists),” said Mohammad, who was released on Nov. 12 after 24 days as a hostage. “They (the two journalists) were in good health, the kidnappers treated us well, they brought us food and allowed us to pray when it was time for prayer.”

Mohammad said he had been held in the Latifiya area, south of Baghdad. His kidnappers had talked about moving the Frenchmen to Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold west of the capital, but decided the road was too dangerous, he said.

The journalists’ Syrian driver, Mohammed Al-Jundi, kidnapped with them, was found alive in Fallujah earlier this month.

In another development a senior US general said on Friday that Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and the network’s ally in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, are trying to communicate with each other even as they continue to elude US forces.

Smith, the No. 2 officer in the command responsible for military operations in the Middle East and Asia, told reporters at the Pentagon that “we know for a fact that there are attempted communications” between Bin Laden, thought to be hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border, and Zarqawi, believed to have escaped the US offensive in his previous suspected base of operations in Fallujah. Smith did not provide evidence for these attempted communications.

Speaking after meetings at CIA headquarters, Smith said it was doubtful whether these attempted communications — likely couriers carrying computer disks — had succeeded, considering “the huge distances involved in those lines of communication.”

Meanwhile, the Stop the War Coalition, UK, circulated the report by the Study Center of Human Rights and Democracy, which states that systematic crimes of genocide have been committed in Fallujah and now across Al Anbar province in Iraq. And it appealed to all the humanitarian organizations to intervene in Fallujah now in this unbelievable situation where the American forces are preventing any organization from entering the city to relieve the remaining civilians as well as the civilians who fled from Fallujah to Saqlaweiya and Karma.

All the medical organizations of Fallujah are appealing to you to intervene now by demanding that the American Administration allow medical staff to enter the cities of Fallujah, Saqlaweiya and Karma — to bury the dead and to give care to the injured. All the humanitarian organizations appeal to you to intervene now to send all kinds of food and medicines to the people of Fallujah and Al-Anbar province.

The report said that what people have seen in recent days are only the images and photos released by the American forces. Nevertheless, these images and photos contain clear evidence that a large-scale crime of genocide has been committed in Fallujah, and is now being committing across the whole Anbar province.