It looks like the clock is ticking. This shit makes me ill....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...012000332.html
Sunni Politician Pleads for Release of American Journalist
By Omar Fekeiki
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, January 20, 2006; 6:12 AM
BAGHDAD, Jan. 20 -- A prominent Sunni politician pleaded for the release of American journalist Jill Carroll on Friday, the day of a deadline set by her captors.
Adnan Dulaimi's appeal was carried live on the al-Arabiya satellite television channel. Al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera satellite television aired repeated requests from Carroll's parents to her captors.
"I urge the men who kidnapped this journalist, Jill Carroll, to release her for the sake of God and our country and our religion and our honor," Dulaimi said in a news conference he called on Carroll's behalf.
Jill Carroll, a freelancer working for the Christian Science Monitor in Iraq, was kidnapped Jan. 7 after she left Dulaimi's offices in the Adil neighborhood of western Baghdad. Her Iraqi interpreter was killed in the ambush.
Dulaimi heads the General Conference for People of Iraq, a prominent Sunni political group, and is a key member of the Sunnis' Iraq Accordance Front that ran in the last parliamentary elections here.
A video released Wednesday under the name of the "Vengeance Brigade," a Sunni militant group, showed Carroll for the first time since the abduction. The kidnappers demanded the release of female Iraqi detainees in the U.S. forces and Iraqi government prisons. They put 72 hours as a deadline to meet their demand.
"We, in the Conference for People of Iraq, will demand those conditions of releasing the detainees in the Iraqi and American prisons," Dulaimi pleaded addressing the kidnappers, "we will demand this by word, negotiations, and talks with Iraqi and American officials."
Dulaimi, a man in his seventies, said that he worked hard with many sides on the release of the Iraqi detainees in Iraq's prisons and that his efforts were fruitful when many of those detainees were released, but "kidnapping this noble journalist will decrease the importance of the efforts. No, it will interrupt them."
"This act tore me apart and pained me," Dulaimi said with his voice rattling, "if it wasn't embarrassing, I would cry."
Dulaimi described Carroll as "a journalist, who came to convey our news and defend our rights and to defend Iraqis," and that all should "protect the journalists no matter what their nationality is and urge all to release any journalist or innocent non-journalist."
In a trembling voice, Dulaimi said, "In the name of God, in the name of religion, in the name of any word of sympathy that exists in Iraq, I urge you to release this female journalist."
The new appeals came as what appeared to be heavy artillery barrages shook southern Baghdad on Friday morning. Iraqi police said that U.S. artillery batteries were responding to at least three mortar rounds fired from the southern neighborhoods toward Baghdad international airport.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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