TOKYO, 18 April 2004 — Japan breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as the last two of its citizens taken hostage in Iraq were released unharmed, bringing a peaceful end to a crisis which had gripped the nation.
Freelance journalist Junpei Yasuda, 30, and human rights activist Nobutaka Watanabe, 36, were handed over to Japanese Embassy staff at a mosque in Baghdad at around 0830 GMT.
The release, which came two days after three other Japanese hostages were freed, was greeted with relief by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose government had been plunged into crisis by the kidnappings.
“It’s good news,” Koizumi told reporters yesterday evening. “The families must be relieved.”
Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi echoed Koizumi’s sentiments,. “I am glad both incidents were resolved,” she said. “I am very much pleased and I express my heartfelt delight for their families.”
After images of the two bearded men were broadcast on NHK appearing in good health, the two men’s emotion-wracked parents emerged to speak to reporters.
Watanabe’s mother Kazue emerged crying and bowing from her home in Ashikaga, some 100 kilometers north of Tokyo, saying; “Thank you, thank you.”
“I don’t know how to express my feelings,” said Yasuda’s father Hideaki, outside his home in Iruma, just west of Tokyo. “I have never been so happy. My wife is watching television and crying.”
Moments after their release, Watanabe relayed a message from the two men’s Iraqi kidnappers, who vowed no let-up in their insurgency against the US-led coalition forces. “The United States and Britain are the enemies of Iraq and we will continue to fight,” Watanabe told a Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) reporter, quoting his captors.
“We don’t want Japanese to come to Iraq because we do not want to harm our friends,” he quoted the kidnapper as saying, adding the hostage-takers said Japan should withdraw its 550 troops from the southern Iraqi town of Samawa.
Watanabe said his hostage-takers showed him respect and did not threaten him during his capture. He criticized US military attacks on Fallujah, the flashpoint west of Baghdad where the first hostages were taken.
“Many are dying because American troops attack Fallujah,” Watanabe said in English broadcast on NHK. “Many Iraqi people are dying in this country. It’s a problem.”
