ISTANBUL, Aug 8 (AFP) - A Turkish truck driver held hostage in Iraq has been allowed to telephone his wife who has pleaded with his kidnappers to set him free since their demands have been met, the Anatolia news agency reported Sunday.
"He told me he was still being held hostage, that he was being treated well but he didn't know when he would be freed," Fatma, the wife of Tahsin Top, told Anatolia.
She said the phone conversation only lasted 30 seconds.
Fatma Top earlier appealed for the kidnappers to set her husband free since their demands for his trucking firm to stop operating in Iraq had been met.
"The activists' demands have been satisfied. We now want them to honour their word and free my husband," Fatma told Anatolia. Top's brother Orhan had made a similar plea, the agency said.
Top was kidnapped on Thursday by a group calling itself the Abdel Kader al-Gilani Brigade, an offshoot of the Islamic Secret Army. His abductors said on Saturday they had seized him as he was driving back to Mosul from Baghdad, where he had been delivering supplies to the US army.
The kidnappers said they were not seeking a ransom but wanted Top's transport company to leave their oil-rich country or he would be beheaded within 48 hours.
Top's employer, a company called Atahan Lojistik, said later on Saturday it was suspending all operations in Iraq and wanted its driver freed safely.
Fatma Top told Anatolia her husband's trip to neighbouring Iraq had been his first journey abroad and that he had refused to heed his family's calls for him not to go.
"After seeing the civil war in Iraq on television, I really didn't want him to go there," the young woman explained.
"The last time he called us, about 13 or 14 days ago, I told him to leave but he wouldn't listen to me," she said.
His brother Orhan Soydan Top told Anatolia he hoped the driver would be freed very soon.
"The firm has taken appropriate measures. The activists' demands have been met. I hope my brother will be freed today or tomorrow," he said.
Turkey's NTV television had on Saturday broadcast video footage of a nervous man, identified as Top, and said his kidnappers had vowed to execute him in 48 hours unless his firm bowed to the kidnappers' demands.
In the video, he addressed his compatriots in Turkish while showing various documents to the camera to prove his identity.
"They are killing... Please, comrade drivers, do not come here," he said.
Several Turkish truck drivers, mainly transporting supplies to the US army, have been abducted by militants in Iraq. Last Monday, Turkey's Murat Yuce was shown in a video being shot in the head by his kidnappers.