UPDATE 9/13: Another murdered hostage, this one Durmus Kumdereli from Turkey, was released today. News, pics, and video here.

Another one. Murat Yuce was the name of the Turkish hostage executed last month. He was shot, rather than beheaded.

Al Jazeera:

A Turkish television channel aired footage of a Turkish hostage in Iraq who said that his captors had given two Turkish companies 72 hours to quit the country in exchange for his life.

The NTV news channel identified the man as Aytullah Gezmen, who went missing in Iraq last month together with another Turk, Murat Yuce.

Al Jazeera:

Yuce was seen shot in the head by his kidnappers in an Internet video on August 2. Yuce was the first Turkish hostage to be executed in Iraq.

Gezmen, who was working as a translator, has been on the list of Turkish hostages held by rebels since the killing of Yuce, a foreign ministry source said.

NTV cited Gezmen as saying that he had been held hostage for 24 days and that his abductors were threatening to kill him if the Bilintur and Tepe companies did not pull out of Iraq in 72 hours.

He also called for help from his family and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

However, the Turkish TV channel did not show the part of the video which included those remarks.

It was not known when the video was taped. It was sent to the Turkish Ihlas news agency, NTV said.

The footage showed Gezmen sitting on a coach, holding a passport. No one else was seen in the video.

"I was together with Murat when we went out of the military (base) to go to another camp to take supplies. While on our way we were captured by Iraqi mujahedeen," Gezmen was heard saying.

Following Yuce's killing, the Ankara-based Bilintur catering company, the employer of the two Turkish men, said it was pulling out all its personnel from Iraq in order to save Gezmen.

The company was delivering services to the U.S. army.

Bilintur, a sub-division of the Tepe company, said Tuesday it had completed the withdrawal on August 15.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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