Word: ransoming
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...stops? The U.S. official says the first switch was probably a handoff to a second group, which would hold him and claim the ransom. "It's not unusual for more than one group to be involved," says the official. "As in any organized business, there's specialization. Some gangs do the snatching and then pass on their captive, for a fee, to another gang." The money changing hands at this stage may be no more than a few hundred dollars; the muffled conversation Waddah heard at the first house may have been a quick round of bargaining...
...chest and thighs, followed by rapid- fire questions: What was his name? Where did he live? Where did he work? What was his family's phone number? "They said, 'The sooner you give us a phone number to call, the sooner we contact your family, negotiate a ransom and let you go,'" Waddah says. A common persuasion technique employed by kidnappers is to call the family of the victim and let them hear him screaming during torture. That usually gets the family's attention and makes them more likely to pay a ransom quickly. It upset the captors' plans, says...
...captives. Waddah says at least two captives he knew to be Shi'ite disappeared abruptly. At his next session in the interrogation room, Waddah's captors told him he was lucky that he was a Sunni. Any Shi'ite whose family was unable to pay ransom within a week was being killed, they said. To reassure them of his Sunni loyalties, Waddah claimed friendship with the fanatical cleric in Ramadi who had tried to force him and his brothers to become jihadist fighters. He also spoke disparagingly about Shi'ites. "I am not proud of what I said...
...murder of Sunnis in Baghdad. "One of the sheiks--and he was a Shi'ite--said the police may themselves have been involved in taking Waddah," Haseeba says. "And even if they weren't, they would not help a Sunni family. They would only harass us for the ransom money...
...explained that the money was not for him but for his contacts. "I think he put most of it into his own pocket," she says. "But at that time, I could not afford to refuse." The days of waiting turned into weeks, and still there was no ransom demand. Some in the family wondered whether Waddah has been murdered rather than kidnapped. As violence in and around Baghdad escalated, even Haseeba began to lose hope, convinced that her son had become another nameless victim of Iraq's sectarian war. Sunnis were being killed all over the city. Surely there...