Terrorism experts dispatched by Tokyo to deal with the Japanese hostage crisis in Iraq obtained full witness accounts from two taxi drivers regarding the abduction of three Japanese civilians on April 11, the fourth day after their captivity was reported, police sources said Saturday.
The information obtained by the National Police Agency's Terrorism Response Team from the two drivers apparently helped the Japanese government determine a profile of the captors, given that the drivers testified in detail about the captors' features and circumstances when the abduction took place, the sources said.
According to the sources, the TRT had a strong suspicion that the captors were not Islamic extremists but local Sunni militants, given that they wore white Arabian-style clothing and white shirts.