Topic: Kidnapped female Sunni MP released

Media: AFP
Byline: n/a
Date: 26 August 2006

BAGHDAD, Aug 26, 2006 (AFP) - A female Iraqi Sunni member of parliament who
was kidnapped almost two months ago has been freed by her captors, state
television reported Saturday.

Taiseer al-Mashhadani, a member of the Sunni National Concord Front -- the
largest Sunni parliamentary bloc -- was snatched on July 1 along with her
seven bodyguards in a Baghdad ambush.

"She was released after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a plea for her
release and she was now in his office," Al-Iraqiya television reported,
without giving any details of the release.

Two of her bodyguards had already been released.

Sunni leaders had suggested that Mashhadani's captors were Shiite militiamen
who had demanded the release of 25 prisoners held in US detention centres in
Iraq as a condition for her freedom.