An American hostage in Iraq was shown pleading for his life in a videotape on Tuesday, as at least 11 people were killed and al Qaeda loyalists attacked polling stations ahead of Sunday's key vote. A bearded man, wearing a black and cream shirt and identified as Roy Hallams, appeared in a videotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera, begging Arab leaders to secure his release from captivity.
Sitting cross-legged on the ground, a gun to his head, the hostage was shaken with nerves and crushing his hands together.
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, who has enjoyed a diplomatic rebirth after halting suspect atomic weapons programmes, was one of those the man appealed to for help, said the TV announcer speaking over the man's statement.
Last month, the US embassy said American Roy Hallum, 56, had been kidnapped in November along with six people from the office of the Saudi Arabian Trading and Contracting Company (SATCO) in Baghdad.
Just five days before Sunday's general elections, assailants gunned down a senior Baghdad judge and his brother-in-law and then danced in the street, shouting "this is what will happen to the traitor Shias".
Judge Qaiss Hashem al-Shamari, 32, the secretary of Iraq's council of judges, who was driving with his brother-in-law, died in a hail of bullets.
The al Qaeda linked Army of Ansar al-Sunna later claimed the killing.
Two civil servants at the commerce ministry and an Iraqi interpretor working for the US military were also murdered, said the interior ministry.
A civilian was killed when he tried to overtake a US convoy in Baghdad, while three policemen, a civilian and two assailants died in clashes south-east of the capital, said officials and medics.
Elsewhere, loyalists of al Qaeda frontman, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed to have attacked at least 10 polling centres overnight. Police said the attacks caused severe damage to stations across Saddam's home province of Salahuddin.
"Trained snipers will be ready to kill the apostates who go to the electoral lairs," said a statement signed by Zarqawi's al Qaeda Group in the Land of Two Rivers, handed out in the town of Al-Dur, on Monday.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned it would be reckless to set a timeline for US troops to leave until Iraqi forces can defeat the insurgency alone.
"I will not set final dates because dates now would be both reckless and dangerous," Allawi told reporters. "When we are ready to take a new step, we will take it, God willing."
On Monday, two US rights groups published reports testing to systemic torture at the hands of Iraqi forces, provoking a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's regime on the eve of the elections intended to usher in democracy.
"The Iraqi interim government is not keeping its promises to honour and respect basic human rights," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director for the Middle East and North Africa, at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"Unlawful arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees (including children) by Iraqi authorities have become routine and commonplace," said the HRW report.
The American Civil Liberties Union said an "elderly Iraqi woman reported having been sodomized with a stick" and that "there was probable cause to believe" three soldiers committed the offences of murder and conspiracy.
On the heels of the US prison abuse scandal at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail, a US official said the American embassy in Baghdad was concerned enough to raise the problem with the Iraqi government.
Although Sunnis have called for a boycott of the vote, the community's main political party told AFP on Tuesday that it wanted to take part in drafting Iraq's constitution and would consider posts in the next government.
"We are willing to do so. It is not a political matter," said Ayad Samarrai, spokesman for the Islamic Party.
Final election results are not expected until 10 days after the ballot.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed in Baghdad on Monday, the US Army said in a statement, while five US soldiers died in a road accident north of Baghdad.
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