Egypt's top envoy to Iraq has been kidnapped in Baghdad just weeks after arriving in the country, Egyptian diplomats said Sunday. Two diplomats, speaking in Cairo and Baghdad to The AP, said Ihab al-Sherif was kidnapped late Saturday in the Iraqi capital.Al-Sherif had arrived in Baghdad on June 1. In mid-June, the Egyptian government said it would upgrade ties with Iraq to full embassy status headed by an ambassador, but it was not immediately clear if al-Sherif currently held the title of ambassador. In a message relayed by a deputy, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said al-Sherif was "Egypt's representative to the whole Iraqi people and that his legal status is the chief of the diplomatic mission and not ambassador."
Egyptian deputy foreign minister Hani Khallaf also said he hoped the kidnappers would appreciate that al-Sherif had gone "to serve the interests of the Iraqi people and we expect them to deal with him in a way compatible with his national, pan-Arab and humanitarian mission."
| Oh well. He's dead. |