Raid nets suspect in deaths of Iraqi team

September 28, 2009|Associated Press

BAGHDAD - Iraqi commandos and US forces have arrested a suspect in the 2006 kidnapping and slayings of an Iraqi taekwondo team whose highway ambush became one of the symbols of Iraq’s lawlessness during its worse years of sectarian violence.

The US military unveiled the arrest in a statement yesterday, but did not say when it took place or identify the suspect. The Iraqi military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Athletes and sports officials were frequent targets of threats, kidnappings, and assassination attempts at the height of the civil strife in 2006 and 2007. Sportsmen were targeted for ransom or as victims of the sectarian violence.

The military statement said Iraqi forces working with American military advisers captured the suspect in Anbar Province, a onetime Sunni insurgent stronghold west of the capital.

The taekwondo team was driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan in May 2006 when their convoy was stopped on the highway in Anbar between Fallujah and Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. All 15 members of the team were abducted.

More than a year later, the remains of 13 team members - mostly skulls and bones entangled in tattered sports uniforms - were found near the main highway leading to Jordan.

News of the arrest was met with some satisfaction by family members.

“We are still overwhelmed by sadness and bitterness. But the arrest of one of the killers will bring some relief to us,’’ said Ali Hussein Hamid, whose cousin Ahmed Ali was among the team members killed.