NOT OSTHOFFS:

German Hostages Beg For Help in New Video (Der Spiegel, 4/10/06)

Concern is mounting for two German engineers held hostage in Iraq for almost 11 weeks after a new video showed them making a desperate appeal for help and their kidnappers again threatened to kill them in a "final ultimatum" unless United States troops release all their prisoners in Iraq.

Engineers Rene Bräunlich and Thomas Nitzschke were abducted on January 24 outside their workplace in the industrial town of Baiji, 110 miles north of Baghdad, in the corner of the notorious Sunni triangle where the worst of the Iraqi insurgency has been concentrated.

"We have been held prisoner here for more than 60 days now. We're at the end of our tether. Please help us. We can't take it any longer. Please help us," said Nitzschke in the video, believed to have been recorded in late March.

Both hostages looked exhausted and frightened and had grown beards. They were wearing T-shirts.

Tragically for them and their family and friends, those who are working on behalf of reconstruction appear not to have a good chance of being released alive and it's probably too late for them to cozy up to Code Pink.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 10, 2006 10:18 AM