ISTANBUL, Feb 15 (AFP) - A Turkish businessman, Kahraman Sadikoglu, arrived back in Turkey on Tuesday a day after he was freed in Iraq after almost two months as a hostage.
Footage broadcast on NTV news channel showed Sadikoglu, looking in good condition, talking to reporters after getting off the private plane which brought him to Istanbul from Baghdad via Amman.
The businessman identified his kidnappers as former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's "fighters, soldiers" who "are protecting their own country" and said he had been released after it became clear that he was not doing business with the occupying forces in Iraq.
"They understood that we did business not with the Amercians and the British, but with the Iraqi government," said Sadikoglu, a shipping magnate.
"Our contract is with the Iraqi government and the money comes from the United Nations as a grant. When this became clear, they did not even touch a single hair on our bodies," he added.
Sadikoglu, nonetheless, said some ransom money was paid for his release.
"Something was paid," the businessman said in response to a question before his voice became unintelligible amid the noise on the tarmac.
Sadikoglu, who was seized in mid-December, was freed late on Monday in southern Iraq, where he spent the night at a British base before being flown to Baghdad, a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry said.
An unconfirmed report in the Vatan newspaper said his family had paid a ransom of 500,000 dollars for his release.
The group that held him after his seizure at the southern port of Umm Qasr had reportedly demanded 20 million dollars.
Three companions who were seized with him, two Turks and an Iraqi, were freed last month.
Sadikoglu, who is reportedly one of the richest men in Turkey, owns an Istanbul-based shipping company that is active in the Iraqi Gulf ports of Basra and Umm Qasr.
The firm notably has contracts to salvage ships that were sunk in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
Turkey borders Iraq to the north, and its nationals have been prime targets of the insurgents that are fighting US-led troops that have been propping up the Baghdad interim government.
A total of some 80 Turks, most of them truck drivers plying Iraqi roads, have been killed in recent months.
A number of Turkish companies active in Iraq have agreed to cease operations in return for the release of employees taken hostage there.

02/15/2005 18:48 GMT - AFP