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Canadian woman held hostage in Iraq talked her way to freedom
By NILES LATHEM New York Post A Canadian woman held hostage in Iraq for 16 harrowing days managed to escape beheading by miraculously persuading one of the terrorists to let her go in exchange for a promise she would help him emigrate to Canada, it was revealed yesterday. Family members of 38-year old Fairuz Yamulky, an Iraqi Kurdish mother of two, was picked up by a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq's northern desert Tuesday. She provided a dramatic account of the secret ordeal of a hostage who had not previously been reported missing and whose plight was kept under wraps by the Canadian government. Yamulky's father, Kamal, who lives in Vancouver, told Canadian newspapers his daughter was regularly beaten and tortured by her captors. On Monday, they threatened to behead her unless the family paid $2.5 million in ransom and the Iraqi government released 50 women prisoners. But in an astonishing turn of events, on Tuesday afternoon the brave hostage seized an opportunity while the leader of the terrorist group was off negotiating with representatives of her family. Her father disclosed that Fairuz was left in a Fallujah home with only one guard watching over her. She started talking to the guard and eventually convinced him that, if he let her flee, she would help him move to Canada. "My daughter is very smart and clever, and she was able to convince him and talk to him in a nice way," the elder Yamulky told the National Post of Canada. The U.S. and Canadian governments, citing the extreme sensitivity of the hostage situation in Iraq where more than 135 foreigners have been seized, refused to confirm the account or disclose what happened to the man who helped Fairuz escape. Fairuz is a mother of 8- and 14-year-old sons whose family fled Iraq in 1991 and settled in Canada. On Sept. 5, Fairuz was traveling in a truck on the dangerous road from Baghdad to Fallujah to deliver supplies with two bodyguards when a group of eight gunmen ambushed them. Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-09-25 |
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