BAGHDAD (Kyodo) The Iraqi man who has confessed to executing a hostage Japanese backpacker in 2004 said Monday that Shosei Koda was not tortured during his captivity.

"We did not inflict any torture on him during his confinement," Hussein Fahmi Badr, 26, who is reportedly linked with al-Qaida, told Kyodo News at a Iraqi Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad.

"He pleaded for his release with tears in his eyes."