Shiite group issues tape of Iraq hostage

A Shiite Muslim militant group claiming to hold five Britons abducted in May released a videotape Tuesday that shows one of the hostages guarded by two armed men and that demands that British troops leave Iraq.

It was believed to be the first time any of the men had been seen since they were seized May 29 from an Iraqi Finance Ministry compound in Baghdad. Four of the men work for the Canada-based security firm Garda World. When they were abducted, they were guarding the fifth man, a computer expert with the McLean, Va.-based management consulting firm BearingPoint.

A British Foreign Office spokesman in London said the video appeared to show one of the hostages.

“My name is Jason,” says a dark-haired, bearded man wearing a tan shirt and sitting on the ground. He is flanked by captors who cannot be seen, but whose assault rifles are clearly pointed at his shoulders. “I’ve been here now for 173 days, and I feel we have been forgotten,” the man says.

Behind him is a banner for the Shiite Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the previously unknown group claiming to hold the men.

The video, dated Nov. 18, was aired on the Arabic-language Al Arabiya satellite television channel. It gave no indication of the whereabouts of the other hostages.

The British government has announced plans to cut its 5,000-strong force in southern Iraq to 2,500 by June, but in the video, the abductors demand that a total withdrawal begin within 10 days. The video does not specify what the captors would do if their demands were not met.

The British Foreign Office spokesman denounced the broadcast, saying it “serves only to add to the distress of the men’s family and friends.”

More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the start of the war in March 2003. The five Britons were seized by dozens of men in police uniforms, who sped off toward Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City in what appeared to be official vehicles.

Suspicion initially fell on radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, which dominates the area, but its leaders deny involvement. It is now believed that the abductions were carried out by splinter factions, which U.S. officials allege are supported by Iran.

There has been a marked drop in such brazen attacks since the deployment of nearly 30,000 additional U.S. troops was completed in June. According to military statistics, violence levels are at their lowest since January 2006, a month before the bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra that served as a catalyst for Iraq’s sectarian war.

U.S. officials credit the decline in part to Sadr’s decision to stand down his militia for six months, and to the decision of thousands of Sunni Arab tribesmen to fight the Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents they once harbored.

In addition, the deployment of extra troops has enabled U.S. and Iraqi forces to go after extremists from both sects in areas where they once found sanctuary.

Nine senior Al Qaeda in Iraq members were killed and 31 captured in November, said Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a U.S. military spokesman. Among the dead was Abu Maysara, identified by Bergner as a Syrian advisor to the group’s leader, Abu Ayyub Masri, and his slain predecessor, Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Bergner acknowledged, however, that Al Qaeda in Iraq remained a “vicious threat” and “one we continue to have to fight very hard against.”

The Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq posted an audiotape Tuesday on a militant website in which its purported leader announced a new bombing campaign against U.S. forces and the “traitors” who fight with them.

“I call upon all the soldiers of Islam to detonate not less than three bombs before the end of this campaign, starting with grenades, IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and, most honorably, suicide attacks,” says the man identified in the tape as Abu Omar Baghdadi. “Those who are not able to execute the above shall kill not less than three infidels instead of each bomb in any manner they see fit.”

The U.S. military, which says the largely homegrown group is foreign-led, has cast doubt on the existence of Baghdadi, whose name would suggest he comes from the Iraqi capital. Bergner reiterated that Baghdadi was believed to be a fictional character invented to give an Iraqi face to a “virtual” organization that is in effect Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Underscoring the persistent danger, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives Tuesday outside a police station northeast of Baghdad, killing six people and injuring 25, police said. The attack occurred in Jalawla, in the Diyala River valley. The area is the scene of persistent clashes with Sunni extremists, who last year proclaimed Diyala’s capital, Baqubah, the center of their Islamic caliphate.

West of Baghdad, a U.S. soldier was killed in an explosion during a vehicle recovery operation Monday in Anbar province, the military said. The blast wounded two other U.S. service members.

The death brought to 3,883 the number of U.S. troops killed since the war began, according to the website icasualties.org.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

tina.susman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Saif Rasheed in Baghdad, Janet Stobart of The Times’ London Bureau and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.