ROME, Oct 4 (AFP) - The brother of an Italian-based Iraqi businessman who had been held hostage in Iraq for more than a month said Monday he had learnt from Italy's foreign ministry that he had been murdered.
Emad Wali said he had been informed of his brother Ajad Anwar Wali's slaying in a phone call from a foreign ministry official.
The Wali brothers have lived in northern Italy for more than 20 years, and the elder Ajad had gone to Iraq to sell Italian-manufactured equipment. He had been held hostage since August 31.
Islamic militants in Iraq earlier sent a video to AFP in Baghdad showing Wali, 44, and 33-year-old Turkish national Yalmaz Dabja, being shot dead after "confessing" to the camera that they were spies.
The video, whose authenticity was impossible to verify, was dated October 2.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi expressed his "sorrow" at the news and said the escalating attacks in Iraq only "strengthen the government's determination to fight international terrorism."
The Wali family strongly denied that the businessman, who fled the regime of Saddam Hussein to study and settle in Italy, was a spy.
"He wasn't a spy. He collaborated neither with the Italian government nor any foreign government," the family said in a statement from their home in Castelfranco Veneto, near the northern city of Treviso.
In the video, one hostage is shown admitting to establishing contacts with Israeli intelligence services "who wanted to buy uranium and (radioactive) red mercury, Turks who asked me to kill (Kurdish leader) Jalal Talabani and Iranians."
The second admitted to having been offered "10 million dollars by the Turkish security services and 30 million dollars by the Israelis" to provide them with red mercury.
In the tape, five masked men brandishing guns and standing behind the two kneeling hostages identify themselves as "fighters of God" and read out a list of accusations against the pair.
It then shows them being shot several times in the back of the head by at least two of the militants.