Baghdad - The cousin of the speaker of the Iraqi parliament was freed from his captors on Tuesday, the Iraqi military said while denying reports that he had been killed. Military spokesman Qassem Atta said that military forces succeeded in freeing Mohammed Abdullah, a military officer, in the Adl district in the suburbs of western Baghdad.
Last week, gunmen reportedly abducted al-Mashhadani while he was on his way to his unit in Diyala province - an ethnically and religiously-mixed province that has been witnessing intense violence over the past few months.
Last Friday, however, reports from the Iraqi parliament had said that he had been killed and that his body was found a day earlier in the Diyala provincial capital Baquba.
But the military source Tuesday denied those reports, insisting that al-Mashhadani - the cousin of Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani - been freed and that some of the kidnappers were arrested.
