IRAQ: Dubai-based Al Arabiya television yesterday aired what it said was a videotape showing an American engineer working for the Pentagon held hostage in Iraq.
The network said it had received the tape from a group calling itself The Islamic Rage Squadrons which said it had kidnapped the man last Monday.
"My name is Aban Elias from Denver, Colorado," an Arabiya transcript quoted the man as saying. "I am a civil engineer working in Baghdad...and we are working with the Pentagon. I was kidnapped and I call upon Muslim organisations to interfere to release me."
The network said a copy of the man's US passport showed he had been born in Iraq. The kidnappers had not made any demands.
When Elias's mother heard the news in Denver she broke down in tears. "Please free up my son. He has no relation with anybody. He only went to work in Baghdad," Thamara Mahmood al-Saloum said.
The man's brother Kazwan Elias told reporters his brother had no political affiliations in Iraq and is an American citizen.
"I'm calling upon all the Islamic organizations to free him. He's got three little kids." His family is living in Jordan.
Dozens of Westerners have been kidnapped in Iraq recently.Some have been released and others killed by their captors.