11.03.2008 - Source: US Department of State

Kidnappings continue throughout 2007 ("Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2007") [ID 23628]

"During the year kidnappings and disappearances remained a severe problem; many individuals disappeared, with frequent accusations directed at rogue police. The majority of the reported cases appeared to be sectarian‑related. Police believed that the great majority of cases were unreported. Many Baghdad residents complained that rogue neighborhood police officers often arrested family members without an arrest warrant and then would later call for a ransom. Numerous reports indicated that rogue police were involved in sectarian-motivated, as well as criminal, kidnappings.

Kidnappings were often conducted for ransom. During the year the police solved virtually none of these cases and rescued few kidnapped individuals. By year's end police rescued three victims of kidnapping in Baghdad.

During the year large-scale kidnappings continued. For example, on April 1, gunmen at a fake checkpoint north of Baghdad kidnapped 19 men from a Shi'a village. Their bodies were found one day later near Baquba, north of Baghdad. On April 3, according to police in Nikhaib, west of Karbala, gunmen in automobiles kidnapped 18 Shi'a men, boys and girls, and then went in the direction of Anbar Province. The whereabouts of the 18 were unknown at year's end."

Document(s): Open document

08.2007 - Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Criminal groups have practices similar to those of sectarian fractions; though in pursuit of financial intentions, they sometimes purport to be part of insurgency or a militia ("UNHCR's Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs of Iraqi Asylum-seekers") [ID 22707]

"Criminal groups are also capitalizing on Iraq’s instability. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish common criminals from insurgents and militias, as all engage in kidnappings and extra-judicial killings and illegal activities such as trafficking in weapons, drugs and oil to fund their activities. According to the Iraq Study Group, “some criminal gangs cooperate with, finance, or purport to be part of the Sunni insurgency or a Shi’ite militia in order to gain legitimacy.” (136)
Criminal activities often reveal a sectarian dimension.137 At times, criminal gangs abduct victims in order to sell them to sectarian groups. Accordingly, criminal groups are fuelling sectarian violence and causing displacement. Increasingly, criminal gangs are working in collusion with or have infiltrated the ISF, leaving victims without access to protection."

Document(s): Open document

11.04.2005 - Source: Integrated Regional Information Network

Focus on increase in kidnappings ("original document (English)") [ID 10715]

"(...) FAMILIES CONCERNED

Iraqi families are becoming increasingly concerned over a rise in kidnappings, where youngsters are being held for huge amounts of ransom money. According to the Ministry of Interior (MoI), more than 130 cases have been registered since July 2004 and 31 gangs have been arrested by the police in the capital, where the majority of kidnappings take place. But many cases aren't reported to the Iraqi police for security reasons. Sabah Kadham, deputy minister of the interior, told IRIN that a special department had been established in the ministry to deal with such cases and that staff had received additional training for this type of investigation.

SCHOOLS INCREASE SECURITY

Many schools in Iraq have increased security and some of them have even set up check points at entrances to ensure that only parents are authorised to collect children from schools. Mansour Primary School, one of the most elite in Baghdad, is on high alert. Since October 2004, 25 children have been kidnapped from the school, according to local authorities, and all the families involved were obliged to pay ransoms of around $60,000 for their release. "All the students from our school who have been kidnapped have not returned to continue their current school year and some families have left the country to ensure safety of their children. They are losing out on education due to the poor security inside Iraq," Imman Kubaissy, a teacher at the primary school, told IRIN.

Kubaissy added that there had also been a psychological impact on children who stayed at the school as some were unable to concentrate in lessons in fear that they too could be kidnapped. Kidnappings of parents are also affecting children. Zaineb Kardish is nine years old. Her father was released only after the payment of $250,000. She told IRIN that she left school after this happened and now stays at home. Some parents have not been so lucky and have lost their loved ones, even after the payment of a ransom. Doctor Abdul Jalil’s nine-year-old son was kidnapped, and despite payment of the ransom he was not released. Jalil reported the case to the police who managed to track down the kidnappers. They discovered that his son was killed as he tried to escape and was hit on the head and bled to death. The kidnappers were recently sentenced to 75 years in prison.

"I'm happy that justice has been done, but the authorities need to tackle the poor security in the country to prevent the same thing happening to other children," Jalil told IRIN with tears in his eyes.

AUTHORITIES NEED MORE SUPPORT

Faissal Ali Dosseki, chief of the kidnapping investigation department of the MoI, told IRIN that some cases had ended tragically due to poor organisation and structure inside the country. He added that the poor information sharing and distrust of authorities delayed their work and investigations. "We don’t have special equipment to facilitate our work, but we are working hard and one of the most difficult things is that families usually don’t inform us of the cases and prefer to solve them by themselves and this is just opening the doors for the criminals," Dosseki added. A number of factors are making it easy for such kidnapping to take place, according to Dosseki. He explained that mobile phone companies were selling lines without asking for full information from the buyer, giving criminals a chance to use the phone system to make negotiations without being traced. Dosseki said that during Saddam Hussein's regime there was a person in each district responsible for registering each family or person that moved into the area, and that those who looked suspicious tended to be reported and investigated more rapidly than today. During the former regime, there were few kidnappings and the only cases registered were resolved - they were usually linked to tribal family disputes and not associated with ransoms or poor security, he said.

Officials from the Coalition forces told IRIN that they had been training special groups with sophisticated new techniques to be used against such criminals, but said that the Iraqi MoI should invest more in this sector. However, Dosseki said that as families were not sharing cases with them, they could not interfere without their permission and it was just making the situation worse. "If I had shared the case of my child with the police in the beginning maybe I wouldn’t have lost him. If I can advise parents I would say that it's important to give a chance to the police to bring back their children with safety, even if it looks too dangerous," Jalil said."

Document(s): original document (English)

19.11.2004 - Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Kidnappings No Longer News in Iraq ("original document") [ID 10716]

"Many Iraqis are seemingly too preoccupied by their own kidnapping fears to mourn Margaret Hassan. (...) Kidnappings and killings have become a way of life for ordinary Iraqis since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, while mistrust of westerners, including those working for aid agencies, is growing. (...) Yet while most overseas attention has focused on the 160 foreigners taken hostage, unofficial estimates say thousands of Iraqis have been captured and held for ransom by criminal gangs and Islamic militant groups. (...) The police, meanwhile, are seen as toothless to act against these crimes, which are carried out either by thugs motivated by easy money or by religious groups determined to track down and punish so-called coalition collaborators. In many cases, families prefer not to involve the authorities, arranging for money to be handed over for the release of their loved one, in the hope that they will be seen to have paid their dues and be left alone.

Businessmen and their families are popular targets, although anyone who looks like they have money is at risk. Some jewelry stores say business has all but collapsed since the end of the war, with people afraid to be seen buying luxury goods in case they are seen as wealthy and fall prey to the kidnappers. Islamic militant groups have also pursued doctors, university professors and the educated middle classes in an apparent effort to purge the country of those most able to advance its reconstruction and rehabilitation.

The resulting uncertainty means that a large section of the country's elite, especially expatriates who returned to their country with high hopes of making a new start in the immediate aftermath of the war, are leaving once again. The Kurdish owner of a telecommunications business moved his family to Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan after an Islamic group posted a death threat under his door. Others plan to sit out the next few months in Jordan, in the hope the situation will be brought under control, although some have said they will never return. There is little pattern to the hostage-taking. Some victims have been released without money changing hands, others have been killed even after ransoms were paid.

Demands of up to 500,000 US dollars have been received for some victims and although these sums are normally bargained down, tens of thousands of dollars have been paid over the past 18 months. Many of the Iraqis taken hostage by Islamic groups are still missing. Not surprisingly then, the kidnapping of foreigners has been treated with growing ambivalence by many Iraqis, for whom the line between occupying force and civilian is becoming increasingly blurred.

Foreign non-government organisations, NGOs, are increasingly perceived as part of the United States-led military apparatus, or as covert operations secretly training Iraqis to become agents for overseas governments. Thirty years of a state-propagated culture of paranoia aren't easily shrugged off, and even IWPR staff have been accused of spying for the Americans. As a result, most NGOs have either withdrawn from the country or relocated their headquarters to Jordan. (...)"

Document(s): original document

28.10.2004 - Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Rise of kidnapping of girls / women serves prostitution ("original document") [ID 10717]

"(Al-Sabah) - The phenomenon of kidnapping girls has recently come into view. It coincides with calls by a number of mosques for marriage of Iraqi girls and foreign gunmen who carry out operations in Iraq. The Interior Intelligence Agency last week discovered a gang run that kidnaps women and sells them to international prostitution networks. This gang received information from minor gangs in the Iraqi provinces and coordinated with the international network. After being kidnapped, girls are sent abroad as prostitutes in neighbouring countries.
(Al-Sabah is a daily independent publicly owned newspaper.)"

Document(s): original document

20.10.2004 - Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Unemployment fuels crime, abductions, kidnappings ("original document") [ID 10718]

"Growing criminality takes the shine off improved living standards.

By Falah Hassan in Baghdad

A lot of paradoxes have popped up in Iraq following the demise of the Saddam Hussein regime. One of them is the dangerous increase in criminal violence that's accompanied a much-improved standard of living for most people. Government employees have perhaps benefited most from the regime change. Their incomes have rocketed compared to the Saddam period - although during this time most civil servants supplemented their meagre earnings with part-time work in the private sector work.

The minimum pension paid to retired government workers has jumped from around one US dollar (3,000 Iraqi dinars) to 75 dollars a month. The average salary for a municipal employee used to be about one dollar a month for those who completed 20 years of service. Now that figure has leapt 100 times.

The same sort of increases have occurred in the private sector, where a
builder's salary has gone up three times to around nine dollars day. But the rise in incomes has unfortunately been accompanied by an increase in crime and violence in the Iraqi street - which is somewhat ironic as many people thought improved standards of living would lead to a reduction in criminality.

Analysts say this has its roots in the former regime's decision to release
hundreds of criminals just before it fell. Many of these convicts looted banks, making off with millions of dollars, and seized government equipment and vehicles. The gangs have recruited members from the ranks of the jobless. A recent survey conducted by the labour and planning ministries showed that the unemployment rate - excluding Kurdistan - was around 28 per cent.

Gangs of criminals find rich pickings in the Bab al-Sharki and al-Batween
districts of central Baghdad, controlling the markets there and even
imposing their own prices, shop-owners say. Municipal sources say thieves have stolen most of the sewer-cleaning vehicles, smuggling them abroad or simply taking them apart and selling them on the pavement.

Disputes between gangs have often broken out, with rival groups kidnapping members of each other's families and demanding ransoms. These abductions have now developed into organised operations, with gangs seizing members of rich families and then asking for ransoms anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 dollars. Kidnappings take place outside Baghdad too, with the town of Latifiya, south of the capital, becoming a particular black spot.

Many of these villains have spent their money on gambling, and made even more - enabling them to buy houses in high-class districts of Baghdad, which has led to big increases in property prices in these areas and elsewhere.

In some neighbourhoods, such as the Baghdad district of Sadr city, the price for a 150 square metre house has nearly tripled, to around 50 million dinars. In the al-Jadeda district, which is little better than Sadr city, prices for a 200 sq m home has jumped four-fold to 100 million dinars.

With unemployment seen as the cause of much of the criminality, questions are being raised over the whether the government has any plan to tackle the scourge. The ministry of labour recently declared that it's providing income support for more than 300,000 families and poor widows. The ministry also said it was seeking to open around 20 centres across the country to train members of the 700,000 or so jobless families, and help them find public sector jobs.

The ministry of planning, meanwhile, believes that foreign investment in
Iraq could play an important role in solving the unemployment problem -
provided that investors actually employ Iraqis and do not import foreign
labour.

Falah Hassan is a correspondent for Al Hurra TV in Baghdad."

Document(s): original document

23.09.2004 - Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Basra: police catching up on criminals ("original document") [ID 10719]

"(Azzaman) - In Basra, two armed men were arrested and a third escaped after trying to break in to the house of the Shia endowment manager Sheikh Mohammed Ali al-Matmoori. Police official Adnan Abdul Razzak said officers have recently arrested 14 dangerous criminals in Basra. They practiced looting, robberies and kidnapping. The police also have arrested another eight criminals for counterfeiting documents and banknotes.
(London-based Azzaman is issued daily by Saad al-Bazaz.)"

Document(s): original document

22.09.2004 - Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Kirkuk: kidnapping of Kurds and Turkmens ("original document") [ID 10720]

"(al-Mutamar) - Kirkuk police claim to have arrested two kidnapping networks. Police chief Tarhan Yousif said the networks were responsible for kidnapping 38 Kurd and Turkmen persons for ransom and for political motives. Yousif added that investigations are underway to get more information about the networks' activities.
(Al-Mutamar is issued daily by the Iraqi National Congress.)"

Document(s): original document

08.2004 - Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Report on the current security and legal situation, material safety, displacement situation, human rights and protection situation as well as an overall analysis ("Country of Origin Information (COI) paper on Iraq (as of August 2004)") [#24717],  [ID 10721]

Document(s): Open document

04.07.2003 - Source: Amnesty International

Report focused on security situation (looting, kidnappings, revenge killings, ill treatment, civilians injuries and deaths, women and girls in fear) ("Iraq: The need for security") [#14174],  [ID 10723]

Document(s): Open document
Open document