Turkish Captive in Iraq Tells of Fearful Struggle to Hold On

[gristy]

I heard on NPR this morning an interview of Scott Taylor, the Canadian publisher who was held captive along with the Turk. He said that Iraqi security forces did nothing to intervene when he would pass through checkpoints, tied up in the back seat of whatever car he was being transported at the time. He also remarked at the large number of houses he stayed in as well as the apparent broad popular support for his kidnapping, as evidenced by the number of different groups he came in contact with as a captive. After his release, the Americans did not debrief him, he said. All in the interview.

by Susan Sachs, New York Times
September 24th, 2004
ANKARA, Turkey, Sept. 20 - Perhaps the words were meant to be reassuring after the blindfold and the guns at her back. But for Zeynep Tugrul, a young Turkish journalist held hostage in northern Iraq, her captor's calm statement was as comforting as bathing in ice.

"Please understand why we have to make sure who you are," said the man who had seemed so friendly, the one everyone called the emir, or leader. "There have been lots of spies here, and we had to cut their heads off."

Ms. Tugrul, a diplomatic affairs correspondent with the daily newspaper Sabah, was freed last week by Iraqi kidnappers after four days of terror and hope, surviving the double pressure of arguing for her own life while trying to protect a Canadian colleague.

She and Scott Taylor, the publisher of a military affairs magazine in Canada, spent most of their captivity together in the northern Iraqi towns of Tal Afar and Mosul, and in desert shantytowns in between. After being handed from one group of captors to another, they were separated on Sept. 11, the day of her unexpected and unexplained release. Mr. Taylor was let go the next day.

more: http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=6943