Brisbane, Australia - (Rioters): The finger of suspicion is increasingly pointed at pesky fundamentalist Iranian kidnappers following the disappearance of all three crew members from the yacht Kaz II which was found empty and drifting off the Great Barrier Reef last week.
And now Hope Himing, the niece of Derek 'Des' Batten the boat's captain, says she believes he and his crew may have been kidnapped, abducted and are being held to ransom in a territorial waters dispute between Australia and Iran.
"Maybe it's because our Prime Minister John Howard has a reputation in the Middle East as a diehard Bush-supporting wingnut fascist whose personal solution to all the Middle East's woes is to nuke the living daylights out of Iran," she told the press today.
"It's a matter of record that Howard thinks that the Bush/Cheney Admninistration is way too namby-pamby on foreign policy and that ignoring a recent window of opportunity to nuke the s**t out of the Ahmadinejad regime could prove the undoing of the entire US Republican Party."
Australian coastguards abandoned their search for the crew ealier this week. But Himing remains adamant that somethiong terrible happened:
"And it ain't some fishy explanation like a giant marine manta ray jumping outta the waters and spearing them alive," she said to the press today.
