Egypt's Iraq envoy kidnapped in Baghdad
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-04 07:10

BAGHDAD - Kidnappers have seized Egypt's envoy to Iraq, possibly in response to reports he was to become the first full-ranking Arab ambassador to the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, diplomats and police sources said on Sunday.

An undated file photograph received on July 3, 2005, shows Egypt's ambassador to Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif, who has been kidnapped in Baghdad. [Reuters]

Ihab el-Sherif, the head of mission, was cornered by gunmen in cars while on a short trip to buy a newspaper near his home on Saturday evening and had not been heard from since, an Egyptian diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"He was buying a newspaper on Saturday evening when two BMWs full of gunmen blocked his way and kidnapped him," he said.

"The motives are believed to be political," he added, noting that Iraq's foreign minister had said just last week that Egypt would become the first Arab state to appoint a full-ranking ambassador to Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, which said it was checking reports that Sherif had disappeared, has yet to confirm it plans to upgrade his post. The Baghdad mission had no comment.

The envoy's white four-wheel drive car was standing undamaged close to a newspaper stand not far from his home.

An upgrade to full ambassadorial status for Sherif on the part of Egypt, the most populous and traditionally most powerful Arab state, could enhance the standing of a new Iraqi government many Arabs view with suspicion because of its backing from the United States and sectarian ties to Shi'ite Iran.

Washington, which sees the post-invasion election held in Iraq as a model for Arab states, has been urging other Arab governments to recognize fully the new Baghdad administration.

KIDNAP WAVE

More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped in the past two years. Some have been killed. Many have been released after the payment of ransoms.

Others have been used to press political demands by insurgents from the Sunni Arab community -- a minority in Iraq but the majority in most other Arab states.

A senior Egyptian diplomat was kidnapped in the Iraqi capital a year ago and released unharmed after several days.

The kidnapping of the envoy was an uncomfortable reminder of insecurity in Iraq as the new, Shi'ite-led government strives to encourage foreign investment following a tour abroad last month by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and other ministers.

A suicide bomber killed up to 20 people, mostly would-be police recruits, in Baghdad on Saturday. That evening two bombers struck police and Iraqi soldiers in the mainly Shi'ite town of Hilla to the south, killing nine people and wounding 33.

A police source said they wore Iraqi army uniform and hit a restaurant opposite police headquarters. Near the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Sunday, a car bomb blasted a police patrol at the town of Riyadh, killing two policemen.

TORTURE ALLEGATIONS

Iraq's police are in the front line of insurgent assaults and are routinely accused by Iraqis of resorting in turn to unlawful arrests and torture -- accusations that were publicly accepted on Sunday by the government.

"These things happen, we know that," Jaafari's spokesman Laith Kubba told a news briefing after a report in Britain's Observer newspaper detailed allegations of death squads and secret torture centers run by Interior Ministry forces.

"It does not happen because the government approves it or adopts it as policy," he added, saying ministers were worried.

Keen to put the abuses of the previous regime of Saddam Hussein behind them, Kubba said the new authorities were training police and troops to respect human rights.

"But theory is one thing and practice is another," he said, adding that decades of violence had brutalised Iraqi society.

The Interior Ministry, which some leaders of Saddam's formerly dominant Sunni Arab minority accuse of sanctioning reprisals by Shi'ite death squads, flatly denied overseeing torture and said protecting human rights was a priority.

Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji denied any policy to torture or kill detainees: "It is all false reports," he said. "We do not want to repeat history. We the Iraqi people have been tortured and abused and do not want to go back to it."

Six months ago, New York-based Human Rights Watch documented what it called "routine and commonplace" abuse by Iraqi forces.

A Kurdish member told the National Assembly on Sunday he had been beaten and subjected to sectarian insults in police custody two weeks ago. Mohammed Hamed Qader demanded an investigation.

The United States and Britain, the new government's main backers, have voiced concern. Both have been embarrassed by killings and abuse of Iraqis by their own forces after they had justified invasion partly on the grounds of Saddam's repression.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Baghdad to meet Jaafari and other Iraqi officials as well as U.S. lawyers helping Iraq a build case against Saddam and his chief aides.

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