Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...guards grew friendly. They helped him get a sense of the scale of the kidnapping operation. By his reckoning, at least 30 captives passed through the cells during his five-week stay. The guards hinted that at least two captives had been government employees. Instead of being ransomed, they were sold to a jihadist group. And the jihadis took a cut from the ransom collections in exchange for protection. The U.S. official says that is common practice among kidnappers: "We know that the kidnapping industry helps finance the terrorists...
...Waddah's home. A few days later, the kidnappers said they had made contact with Waddah's family. But Haseeba and her other sons, believing him to be dead, had already held a wake for him. Now they refused to believe that he was alive, rejecting the kidnappers' ransom demand as either a terrible prank or an opportunist's attempt to capitalize on their loss. "They are not going to pay," the interrogator told Waddah. "We're not sure what to do with you." Later that day, Waddah was taken to the interrogation room--his first visit in nearly...