BAGHDAD, Iraq, 7 August 2003 — Stolen from his Baghdad street 13 days ago while playing with friends, Peter Yakob, a mute child of 6, couldn’t tell the gang of Iraqi kidnappers his phone number.
For two days, the kidnappers tried to get the number from him while the boy’s family waited frantically for a message from the criminals. The terrified boy, who can communicate with his family but not strangers, often cried. Ali, one of the kidnappers, would hold a gun to his head, screaming at the boy to be silent or he would kill him.
On the third day, Peter’s parents chalked their phone number on the exterior wall of their home. Within 30 minutes, a call came demanding what to them was an unimaginable amount, $50,000.
“When we said we couldn’t pay, they said: ‘That’s your problem. Either pay the money or we’ll send him home to you in a sack,’ ‘’ Peter’s mother, Makdonya Yusuf, 47, told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. Peter’s family desperately bargained with the gang, finally paying $15,000 ransom.
In the security vacuum that followed the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, lootings came first, following by carjackings. Now, the appearance of highly organized kidnapping gangs in Iraq sends a worrying message to US-led occupation authorities, suggesting a level of criminal organization and commitment well beyond the looting spasm that followed the regime’s fall.
The kidnappings have a dark, ruthless quality, often targeting children and teen-agers, usually from Iraq’s tiny Christian community who have no tribal networks to fight back against the gangs. In many cases the only sons of large middle-income or wealthy families are seized. The kidnappings, committed brazenly in broad daylight, only add to Iraqis’ sense that nowhere is safe, day or night.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is overseeing the Iraqi police force, held a news briefing Tuesday to announce that a kidnapping gang of nine had been caught Monday in central Baghdad and several hostages freed.
He did not mention that one woman hostage was shot dead by the kidnappers during the operation by Iraqi police, a fact that emerged in questions to Iraqi police officers near the end of the briefing. Kerik said the Iraqi police carried out the operation without US help, attacking the house at dawn, triggering a gun battle. One kidnapper was wounded.
Even primitive crime statistics don’t exist in the Iraqi police force, so it is difficult to establish the exact number of kidnappings, but members of the Christian community listed many cases and Kerik said three similar gangs had been arrested in recent weeks. Kerik said Iraqi police uniforms were found at the home of the gang members arrested Monday, suggesting they had posed as police. He urged Iraqis to report kidnappings.
But several families of kidnap victims interviewed by the Times in Baghdad said they had approached police or the US military for help but got little or no assistance. They paid ransoms of between $15,000 and $75,000 for the release of loved ones.
“There are so many of these cases in Baghdad,’’ said Adib Yunan, 46, Peter’s uncle, a businessman and liquor store owner, who bargained the ransom price down. “It’s a matter of money, simple money.’’ Yunan’s brother, the boy’s father, works in his store and has a rental house.
The gangs carefully track their targets, watching the victim’s routine carefully and finding out many details of the family’s situation and activities. Yunan and his brother went to a police station in the Hay al Mikhaniq neighborhood seeking help. US military police are stationed in all Iraqi police stations. “We went to the police and saw the Americans. An American told us, ‘What can we do?’ ‘’ he said, a complaint echoed by other families of victims. He said after providing information and pictures of the boy to American and Iraqi police, the Americans promised to keep in touch. But his family heard nothing more and resolved the case themselves by paying the ransom.
Makdonya Yusuf got her son back four days after he was kidnapped. But the happy, smiling boy had changed. He was confused and seemed drugged. At night he lay awake, frightened.
“My son used to be carefree, but now he’s nervous and terrified,’’ she said. “He can’t sleep. He shouts, ‘Ali is coming, Ali is coming to take me.’ ‘’
Adib Yunan, Peter’s uncle, said the release of prisoners by Saddam before the war planted the seeds of the crime spree.
“This is the aftermath of two or three wars,’’ he said. “There are so many men who have no job, so they resort to the simplest way to get money.’’
Adnan Issa, 48, a restaurant owner, paid $15,000 for the release of his only son, Rani, 17, kidnapped by gunmen who jumped into his taxi one recent morning. The gang initially demanded $120,000 and only relented after the family produced documents to prove that their house was rented.
“My husband was completely shocked. He couldn’t do anything. God gave me the strength to carry on and negotiate the matter,’’ said Rani’s mother, Suaad Jibro, 42, who tearfully begged and bargained with the gang on the phone.
She said she and her husband were too frightened to go to police even after they recovered their son for fear the gang would retaliate. Now they are desperate to sell the family restaurant and flee Iraq.
