Anti-diplomatic terror

This is not the first time that Iraqi terrorists have used attacks on diplomats as a means of putting pressure on the governments of other countries. The peak of anti-diplomatic terror occurred last summer. Then the targets were embassy workers of Islamic states. On July 2, 2005, the Jihad Base in Iraq group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, recently eliminated by the Americans, kidnapped the Egyptian Ambassador to Baghdad, Ihab al-Sherif. The news of his murder came five days after the abduction. On July 21, Algerian Ambassador to Iraq Ali Belaroussi and Algerian diplomat Izzeddine Belkadi were taken hostage and were also killed a few days later. Al-Zarqawi's bandits explained their crime by saying that the diplomats represented "a country that is not governed as Allah commanded."

In addition, on July 5, the cars of the head of the Bahrain diplomatic mission in Iraq, Hassan al-Ansari, and the representative of Pakistan, Mohammad Younis Khan, were fired upon. The Bahraini envoy was shot in the arm and was hospitalized, but the Pakistani diplomats were not injured. On the same day, two cars of the Russian embassy came under fire in Baghdad, however, according to the representative of our Foreign Ministry, Alexander Yakovenko, these were “stray bullets” and the action was not directed against the Russians. None of the employees of the Russian diplomatic mission were injured in this shelling.

In October 2004, Abderrahim Boualem and Abdelkarim Muhafidim, a driver and technical officer at the Moroccan Embassy, ​​were kidnapped in Iraq. The Jihad Base in Iraq also claimed responsibility for this crime, demanding that foreign diplomats leave Iraq and stop supporting the “criminal government” of Baghdad. Bandits killed the Moroccans on November 3. And on July 23 of the same year, certain “Lions of Allah Brigades” kidnapped the Egyptian diplomat Muhammad Mamdouh Qutb. A few days later he was released; it was reported that the criminals were struck by the piety and high moral qualities of the Egyptian.

The Iranian consul Fereydoun Jahani, who was captured in August 2004 on the road from Baghdad to Karbala, also managed to escape alive from the clutches of the bandits. He spent 57 days in captivity of the Islamic Army of Iraq group and was released after long negotiations only at the end of September. The same gang took responsibility for the murder of American diplomat Ed Seitz: on October 24 of the same year, he became the victim of shelling at the headquarters of the US military command in Baghdad.

Mikhail MANSKOY