Ransom deadline today for Cypriot hostage in Iraq

TODAY is the deadline to pay a $500,000 ransom for the release of a 40-year-old Cypriot-Lebanese businessman held hostage by a militant group in Iraq.

Garabet Jean Jikerjian, who holds dual Lebanese and Cypriot citizenship, was kidnapped from his Baghdad home on August 21 by a militant group calling itself ‘The Group for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’, which initially threatened to kill him unless they received a $20,000 ransom.

The group released a video showing a hooded gunman pointing a gun at Jikerjian as he pleaded for his life, calling on the company that employed him, Jetco Trading, to pull out of Iraq.

The militants accused the man of working for an alcohol distributor company that “deals directly with the crusading occupiers of Iraq”.

Jetco Trading pulled out of Iraq and paid the militants the $20,000 but the kidnappers then demanded another two million dollars.

Last Wednesday, Jikerjian’s aunt, Rita Medzadourian, told the Cyprus Mail that the kidnappers had reduced their demands from two million dollars to $500,000. The aunt said she is “calling on the governments involved in this crisis to put pressure on the owner of the company my nephew is working for” to pay the ransom.

Phileleftheros yesterday reported that the kidnappers have suddenly increased the ransom to one million dollars but the victim’s aunt was unavailable to confirm the information.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.