AP - A Japanese activist who was briefly held captive in Iraq has sued his own government, saying its decision to send troops to the region angered his kidnappers and was to blame for his ordeal.
Nobutaka Watanabe, 35, is seeking the equivalent of $46,000 for mental and physical hardship he suffered during his four days as a hostage, his lawyer Masatoshi Uchida told The Associated Press Wednesday.
"Mr. Watanabe believes his kidnapping was the result of Japan's military presence," said Uchida. "His captors told him that he had been taken because he was from a country that had sent troops to Iraq."
Watanabe, who filed the suit Tuesday, had earlier written dispatches for his activist group from the southern city of Samawah, protesting Japan's deployment of some 550 troops there on a humanitarian mission to rebuild infrastructure.
He was taken hostage along with freelance journalist Jumpei Yasuda while traveling near the besieged city of Fallujah on April 14.
I don't think this is really so much about the money as it is about the political statement. But still, the premise of his lawsuit is nonsense. He was poking around in a war zone when the enemies of his country took him hostage. What did he think was going to happen?
I don't get these people. You'd think that after you were taken hostage and threatened with death by a group of people you'd be all for the defeat of those people on the field of battle, yet this nut job gets released and the first thing he does is file a lawsuit against his own country who is trying to defeat the very people who took him hostage in the first place.
No word yet on whether or not this guy actually thanked his government for him out of Iraq alive and in one piece.