One of the two Japanese taken captive by gunmen Wednesday near Baghdad and freed Saturday has told a friend in Tokyo that he does not believe he did the wrong thing by entering the war-ravaged country, despite being warned by Tokyo not to do so.
Nobutaka Watanabe, 36, a member of the Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization Trans-Pacific GI/SDF Rights Hotline, was freed along with his roommate, Junpei Yasuda, a freelance journalist, after being abducted in a Baghdad suburb.
Their release followed that of three other Japanese civilian hostages -- a freelance journalist, an aid worker and a recent high school graduate -- on Thursday by gunmen who demanded the withdrawal of the Ground Self-Defense Force troops in Iraq.