US believes British hostages still alive
The US military believes that five British security guards kidnapped in May in Baghdad are still alive, the No 2 American commander in Iraq said today.
Four of the kidnap victims are security professionals working for the firm GardaWorld. The fifth is an expert who was working for the US management consultancy firm BearingPoint.
They were seized on May 29 by gunmen wearing police uniforms from a Finance Ministry compound in the capital.
“We track every day where we think they might be,” Lt Gen Ray Odierno said. “We have reason to think they are still alive.”
Odierno would not say what indications the Americans had that the five were still alive.
But he said the command suspects that splinter groups from the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were responsible.
The British government issued an appeal in July for information on the five captives.
The British ambassador to Iraq, Dominic Asquith, indicated that his government was prepared to talk to the kidnappers about the terms of their release.
