Re: Video Shows Captured US Soldier

Date: April 17, 2004

"Video Shows Captured U.S. Soldier
A gunman says the captors are keeping the American to be exchanged for Iraqi prisoners.

By IAN FISHER & JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier who has been missing for a week since his fuel convoy was attacked west of Baghdad was seen on a videotape Friday being held captive by six armed and masked men. The family of the soldier, Pvt. 1st Class Keith Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, confirmed his identity.

A voice speaking in Arabic on the tape, first shown on the Arab news network Al Jazeera, said Maupin was being held to trade for Iraqi prisoners in the hands of Americans.

Maupin, who identified himself on the tape, was dressed in fatigues and a floppy desert hat and shown looking down, chewing on his lip nervously. The Pentagon said Maupin was one of two soldiers missing after an attack April 9. Seven civilian contractors are also missing from that attack.

"I came to Iraq to liberate it," Maupin said, according to an Arabic translation broadcast by Al Jazeera, in a soft and uncertain voice. "But I didn't want to come here because I wanted to be with my son." He said he had a 10-month-old son and was married.

The tape was released on a complex day in the struggle to end two serious standoffs between Iraqi insurgents and the U.S. military, as a rebel Shiite Muslim cleric again defied a key American demand and U.S. officials said their patience with Sunni Muslim insurgents was running out.

Over the past two weeks, Iraqi insurgents have abducted some 40 foreigners -- about half of whom have been released unharmed, including at least four Friday -- as part of a new strategy that has raised the dangers here and caused further divisions among the United States and its allies over Iraq.

On Friday, a group of 118 workers from Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics were evacuated from Iraq.

With some 2,500 troops surrounding the cities of Najaf and Kufa, south of Baghdad, the Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, appeared for the first time in public in two weeks, preaching a fiery sermon at a mosque in Kufa, the center of his strength, in which he refused to disband his militia, the Mahdi Army, as U.S. officials have repeatedly demanded.

"That will not happen," said alSadr, who led a broad uprising against the U.S. occupation here. "I have founded this army with the cooperation of the Iraqi people." He had hinted in recent days that he could agree to some face-saving compromise to avoid a bloody showdown with U.S. soldiers who have surrounded Najaf, south of Baghdad.

Also on Friday, Shiite militia members ambushed a U.S. convoy near Kufa. There was no immediate word on any casualties.

Meantime, in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, U.S. officials issued a clear warning Friday that they will not allow the violence there to continue and that time was running out for peace talks.

The warning was sounded at a news conference right before U.S. officials met with tribal elders from Fallujah to discuss alternatives short of a military takeover of the city, a hotbed of the resistance movement and one of the gravest security concerns in Iraq.

"I must be candid, and say time is limited," said Richard Jones, the deputy administrator for the occupation authority in Iraq. "We cannot just sit here and allow the situation to continue the way it is. There are literally tens of thousands of innocent people who are bottled up in that city, and we don't want them to continue to be held hostage by these terrorist and militant groups."

Jones then stepped inside a heavily guarded building on a U.S. Marine base to negotiate with the Fallujah delegation, who were so concerned about reprisals for talking to the Americans that they did not want their identities revealed or their pictures taken.

After the meeting, Hashem al Hassani, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party and one of the intermediaries between U.S. officials and Fallujah representatives, said the Fallujah contingent agreed to put more pressure on insurgents to stop attacking U.S. forces and to lay down their heavy weapons.

"Fallujans want to return to peace and normal life," Hassani said. "They are willing to take steps in that direction."

Even with the standoffs in Najaf and Fallujah unresolved and still potentially volatile, there has been no sign in recent days of the violence that raged through cities west and south of the capital this month. But the new problem of kidnapping -- a tactic that U.S. officials seem to have no real tools to combat -- loomed as a personal and emotional embodiment of the risks in Iraq.

In the Al Jazeera video, the gunman standing closest to Maupin held his finger on the trigger of his automatic rifle. No mention was made of the other missing U.S. soldier, Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C.

The other documented hostages have been civilians. On Wednesday, Iraqi insurgents executed one of four Italian security guards -- and filmed the killing on video -- who had been traveling with another U.S. supply convoy. They threatened to kill the rest unless Italy withdrew its troops from Iraq.

On the tape shown by Al Jazeera on Friday, the captors did not threaten to kill their prisoner and said they were treating him well. Maupin did not appear to be injured.

Also on Friday, a Danish businessman was reported missing north of Baghdad, and U.S. officials said Friday that a Jordanian businessman had been captured recently in Basra.

At the same time, three Czech journalists -- Michal Kubal and Petr Klima from Czech Television and Vit Pohanka from Czech Radio -- were freed, five days after their taxi was hijacked by armed men near Fallujah. Also, a Syrian-born Canadian aid worker, Fadi Ihsan Fadel, was taken to al-Sadr's office in Najaf and released Friday. There was no word about a second man, Nabil George Razuq, abducted at the same time."

and

"U.S. Soldier Shown Captive on Videotape

By JIM KRANE

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Videotape broadcast Friday showed a tense and frightened U.S. soldier held captive by masked gunmen who said they want to trade him for comrades imprisoned by the U.S.-led occupation. The kidnappers also suggested they were holding other hostages.

Pfc. Keith Maupin, 20, was the first U.S. serviceman and second American confirmed kidnapped in a recent wave of abductions in Iraq. Wearing a floppy desert hat, he sat on the floor and appeared unharmed in the footage aired on the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera.

"My name is Keith Matthew Maupin. I am a soldier from the 1st Division," he said, looking into the camera. "I am married with a 10-month-old son. I came to liberate Iraq, but I did not come willingly because I wanted to stay with my child."

During the video, one of the gunmen was heard saying: "We are keeping him to be exchanged for some of the prisoners captured by the occupation forces."

(AP) Fires burn shortly after a U.S. AC-130 Specter gunship hits targets in Fallujah, Iraq with...
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"Some of our groups managed to capture one of the American soldiers, and he is one of many others. He is being treated according to the treatment of prisoners in the Islamic religion and he is in good health," the gunman said on the tape, a copy of which was dropped off at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar.

About two dozen foreigners have been abducted in the past week amid the worst violence Iraq has seen since the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003. U.S. military officials have reported capturing more than 80 insurgents in fighting since April 1.

Maupin, of Batavia, Ohio, and Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C., were listed as missing after their convoy was attacked April 9 outside Baghdad amid a wave of kidnappings blamed on anti-U.S. insurgents.

Seven private U.S. contractors also disappeared after the convoy attack, including Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Mississippi, the only other American known to have been captured. American experts were working to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad were the remains of some of the missing.

Most of the recent kidnappings appear to have been carried out by Sunni militant groups, though a few foreigners have been taken by Shiites in the south. U.S. officials are struggling to determine whether there is a central hand behind the various hostage-takers.

(AP) A U.S. soldier from the 25th Infantry Division keeps guard at a traffic checkpoint on the outskirts...
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In the latest bloodshed, U.S. troops skirmished with Shiite militiamen near the southern city of Kufa; five Iraqis died. In the north, mortars fired by insurgents killed eight Iraqi civilians in Mosul.

Elsewhere, there were signs of progress in ending the violence in the besieged city of Fallujah with the first direct negotiations between U.S. officials and city leaders.

The military agreed to reposition troops to give residents better access to the city's hospital, but U.S. negotiators were pressing the Fallujah leaders to get insurgents to abide by a cease-fire.

The top civilian negotiator warned that time was running short for talks. "I must be candid ... time is limited," said Richard H. Jones, deputy director of the U.S. coalition authority. "We cannot just sit and allow the situation to continue the way it is."

Meanwhile, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, warned the U.S. military against entering the holy city of Najaf to capture a radical cleric wanted for murder.

(AP) Iraqis are lined up and checked at a traffic checkpoint on the outskirts of Najaf, Iraq, Friday...
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U.S. Maj. Gen. John Sattler said the 2,500 U.S. troops deployed on the edge of the southern city would not move in for now. Negotiations are under way to find a compromise to avert an attack on Najaf.

The wanted cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, took a defiant tone, preaching while wearing a shroud symbolizing his willingness to die and warning that negotiations were near collapse.

"I am ready to meet martyrdom for the sake of Iraq," al-Sadr said Friday.

Maupin and the other missing soldier are assigned to the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company, based at Bartonville, Ill.

On the tape, the gunmen's faces are covered by keffiyeh scarves. They stand behind Maupin, in contrast to footage aired last week of three Japanese hostages in which their kidnappers held knives to their throats as they screamed. The Japanese were later freed unharmed.

(AP) An Iraqi man is interrogated after posters of Muqtada al-Sadr were found in his car at a traffic...
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At the Maupin home in Ohio, 15 miles east of Cincinnati, a friend read a statement from the family but declined to answer questions.

"We'd like to say, 'Matt, we love you and we can't wait until we get to hug you again,'" said Carl R. Cottrell II, the boyfriend of Maupin's sister. He wore a yellow ribbon pinned to his shirt and was flanked by military officers.

In investigating the various abductions, the U.S. military has seen "loose coordination" among them, said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy head of operations in Iraq.

However, another top military official Baghdad said there was no information yet on who all the captors were and no evidence central organization.

"I'm not seeing one person in charge of all this," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There's a lot of little informal coordination that goes on and there's a lot of copycat."

At least 17 foreigners, according to an Associated Press tally, remain unaccounted for in the recent wave of abductions. In other related developments:

- Three Czech journalists and a Syrian-Canadian aid worker were freed by their captors; all said they were in good health. The Czechs had been missing since Sunday after checking out of their hotel to leave for Jordan by taxi.

- A man from the United Arab Emirates and a Danish businessman were reported kidnapped.

- A Chinese citizen was released Friday, two days after being taken captive, said Muthanna Harith, a member of the Islamic Clerics Committee, the highest Sunni organization in Iraq.

The clerics' committee also helped free the three Japanese Thursday. That day, however, an Italian security guard was killed in captivity.

Associated Press writers Lee Keath, in Baghdad, and Bassem Mroue, in Najaf, also contributed to this report.

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