Turkish firm leaves Iraq to save driver
A Turkish company is pulling out of Iraq after captors threatened to behead one of its drivers.
Turkish television broadcast a video purportedly showing the kidnapped truck driver in Iraq repeatedly urging fellow truckers not to come to the country.
A newscaster said his captors threatened to behead the man unless his company withdrew from Iraq within 48 hours.
Hasan Tarhan, a partner in the Atahan Lojistik international transportation company, which employs the driver, released a statement saying the company was pulling out of Iraq.
It is the latest in a string of Turkish companies to declare they would no longer operate in Iraq to secure the release of kidnapped staff.
The country’s truckers’ association decided to halt deliveries to the American military in Iraq following the murder of a Turkish hostage, Murat Yuce, in Iraq earlier this week.
Three other companies, whose employees were either missing or kidnapped, also said they were ceasing business in Iraq in the hopes of rescuing the workers.
An al-Qaida-linked militant group in Iraq released two Turkish truck drivers last week after the companies said they were pulling out of Iraq.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said that five Turks were reported missing in Iraq, including three people believed to have been kidnapped.
In the video shown on Turkish TVS, the driver, identified as Tahsin Abdurrahman Top, is shown sitting on a floor with masked gunmen standing behind him, holding rifles to his head. A man is seen sitting next to him, reading from a sheet of paper in Arabic.
“Don’t come, don’t come for America. … They are killing, they are slaughtering, they are doing all sorts of dirty things. Please, my driver colleagues don’t come,” the man is heard saying. “Look at me, look at the state I’m in.”
“America is our enemy, Iraq is our brother,” he says, visibly tense and agitated.
The video then shows the man holding Turkish identity papers – a passport, driver’s licence and national identity card.
Al-Jazeera reported that the group holding the Turkish truck driver calls itself “The Brigades of Sheik Abdul Qader al-Gilani”.
The Anatolia news agency said the driver was carrying material for prefabricated homes to US troops and was abducted on August 5 on a road between Tikrit and Mosul. It was his first trip outside of Turkey.
