Iraq: An Iraqi Islamist group said it has moved the abducted US Marine Cpl Wassef Ali Hassoun to "a place of safety" after he pledged not to return to the American armed forces, Al Jazeera television said yesterday.
Al Jazeera said the announcement came in a statement it received from the Islamic Response Movement, the same group it reported on June 27th as claiming to have kidnapped Cpl Hassoun and threatening to behead him.
In the statement the group did not say where Cpl Hassoun had been taken, the television station said. It gave no further details. Eight days ago Al Jazeera showed a brief video of a blindfolded man dressed in camouflage sitting in a chair with a hand holding a sword above his head. A Marine Corps identity card named him as Cpl Wassef Ali Hassoun.
It quoted the Islamic Response Movement as saying it had kidnapped a US marine after luring him from a US base.
On Sunday, a group calling itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna denied reports on Islamist websites that said it had decapitated Cpl Hassoun, a marine of Lebanese descent from the First Marine Expeditionary Force who has been missing since June 21st.
The statement on Cpl Hassoun came as a US plane fired a missile at a house in the Iraqi town of Falluja, killing five people, residents said.
Residents said the dead were members of an Iraqi family living in the north-west of the town. US forces have launched a series of airstrikes on what they describe as safe houses of the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Falluja.
While Iraq's interim government has promised to deal with militants sabotaging efforts to rebuild Iraq, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi yesterday postponed an announcement on a security law to curb insurgents but gave no explanation for the latest delay.
Mr Allawi cancelled a scheduled news conference on the law at short notice and an official at his office said no new time for the announcement had been set.
The government had planned to unveil the measures at a news conference on Saturday, but cancelled it at the last minute.
Despite the delays, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said the government would soon introduce the security law, reinstate the death penalty and offer a temporary amnesty to insurgents.
"The biggest challenge to the interim government is security," Mr Zebari said in an interview. "If you don't deliver, people will turn their back on you."
But he said the government would not sacrifice human rights or progress towards elections, due in January.
"I would be surprised if it's not announced by the end of the week," National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said, referring to the revised public safety law.
Mr Zebari said the government unanimously favoured restoring capital punishment, suspended during the 14-month US-British occupation. The penalty could apply to Saddam Hussein and 11 of his lieutenants if they are convicted by a special tribunal.
The 12 men appeared before an Iraqi judge on Thursday to hear they would be charged over the invasion of Kuwait, ethnic cleansing of Kurds, suppression of Kurdish and Shia revolts, and murders of political and religious foes over three decades.
While vowing to punish Baathists with "blood on their hands", criminals and foreign militants pursuing their own anti-American jihad in Iraq, Mr Allawi has spoken of an amnesty for Iraqis who fought the occupation out of nationalism.
Violence has racked Iraq since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam last year. Insurgents have attacked US forces, Iraqi policemen and oil industry targets across the country.
Police said a roadside bomb wounded five civilians in the northern city of Mosul yesterday.
An Iraqi civilian was killed and four were wounded in the southern city of Basra when mortar rounds fired by guerrillas at the main government building hit nearby homes. - (Reuters)