An Islamist group holding two Pakistani contractors hostage said late Wednesday it had killed the men but freed their Iraqi driver, Al-Jazeera TV reported.
The group, calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, had announced in a video Monday that it kidnapped two Pakistanis working for U.S. forces and sentenced them to death because their country was discussing dispatching troops to Iraq.
In a new videotape sent to Al-Jazeera on Wednesday, the men said they had carried out their threat, the station reported.
The newsreader said the video showed the corpses of the two men; however, the station declined to show the footage.
The kidnapped men were identified by Pakistan as engineer Raja Azad, 49, and driver Sajad Naeem, 29, both of whom worked for the Kuwait-based al-Tamimi group in Baghdad.
The activists also warned the company to stop doing business in Iraq or they would kill more of its employees.
The group said it had released the Iraqi driver, Omar Khaled Selman, after it was clear he had been duped by the Pakistanis. The activists released a video Wednesday showing Selman describing his ordeal.
"After interrogation, they charged us all with the death penalty, and then they postponed mine and carried out the death penalty for the two Pakistanis because it was clear that they were spies," he said.
"After further interrogation with me, they found out that I was only a driver and they released me," he said on the video broadcast on the station.
In reaction, Pakistan has condemned the reported killing of the two men, with President Pervez Musharraf saying it had harmed humanity and Islam.
Musharraf and Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat "have received with the greatest distress and anguish the news of the reported murder of two Pakistanis in Iraq," a government statement said.
"Their hearts go out in sympathy to the bereaved families and they share their grief and sorrow along with millions of other Pakistanis," said the statement, carried by the official Associated Press of Pakistan.
"They said those who have committed this crime have caused the greatest harm both to humanity and Islam," it said.
Pakistan has always condemned "terrorism" and believed that such barbaric acts could never be justified, the report quoted Musharraf and Shujaat as saying.
Both Pakistani leaders "prayed for peace of the departed souls and fortitude to the bereaved families," the report said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the government had yet to confirm the killings, reported by the Arab network.
"It is still not confirmed through official channels that both the Pakistani hostages have been killed by their captors," Khan said.
"This is a brutal murder slaying. It has nothing to do with politics," Masood Khan, a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, told CNN. "They have taken innocent lives. Here in Pakistan, everybody will be mourning tomorrow."
Meanwhile, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group kidnapped a Somali truck driver working for a Kuwaiti company in Iraq, according to a videotape aired Thursday on Al-Jazeera.
The videotape, released by the Tawhid and Jihad group, showed three masked and armed Islamists standing behind a seated man waving a passport.
Al-Jazeera's news presenter identified the hostage as Ali Ahmed Moussa and said the activists had threatened to behead him in 48 hours if the Kuwaiti company he works for doesn't stop working in Iraq.
The company was not identified. An identity card shown during the tape gave his year of birth as 1959. It was not clear from the footage when the man kidnapped. (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
