Update on Iraq’s mass kidnapping

Roads to Iraq

...The kidnapers took the hostages from the High-education Ministry, riding on the highway to an Area near "Iraqi National Stadium" which is near the Interior Ministry, their they got rid of the police, took it back to the Ministry [where they belong] and then continued riding different cars to Sadr-City, to reach Sadr-City they must pass through three American checkpoints (...) Iraqirabita also managed to contact on the released hostages and he said: They isolate women from men and searched all the floors of the building. It seems that the number of gunmen has been very significant to do these procedures, then they handcuffed us and blindfolded our eyes with adhesive tape, thye put us in cars, I do not know what, but seemed to me a small bus or similar. They asked me if I am a Sunni or Shiite, because my name is neutral [can be Sunni or Shiite…ie Mohhamed, Ali], I told them I am Shiite, they asked me to enumerate the twelve Shiite imams, tell their names, then they told me what the prayers conditions at the Shiites, I gave the answers because I have some knowledge, and I am ready for this moment, thank God .. After that the kidnappers shaved my beard, and somebody said "send him free", when I went out, I knew I was in Sadr-City...

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Iraq hostages 'freed'

State television Iraqiya said most of the hostages seized at a Higher Education Ministry building today had been freed in operations by security forces in Baghdad. Iraqiya quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying operations were continuing to free the remaining hostages (...) Amid new suspicions of police complicity in the latest and biggest mass kidnapping, the interior minister hauled in police chiefs to explain how dozens of gunmen swept into the Higher Education Ministry annexe, rounded up those inside, and drove them off in broad daylight toward a Shi'ite militia stronghold. Women were left behind after having their mobile phones confiscated. Some of those released earlier in the day said they were driven to Sadr City, a Shi'ite militia stronghold in eastern Baghdad, Higher Education Minister Abd Dhiab said....

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Five police chiefs arrested after mass kidnapping

Paul Schemm

FIVE police chiefs have been detained after armed men in military-style uniforms seized scores of people from a Sunni-led ministry in broad daylight yesterday. The raid on a higher education ministry building in a normally peaceful area of the capital came as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki faced growing criticism from his US backers for not doing more to rein in Shiite militias with alleged links to the security forces. The hostages seized from the ministry's scientific research institute in the middle-class neighbourhood of Karrada included visitors as well as staff, in one of the largest mass abductions of Iraq's sectarian dirty war. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh acknowledged that the mass abduction was the work of militiamen who had

infiltrated the interior ministry and were carrying out "organised" killings...

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