News of a kidnapping in Baghdad

Iraqi medic Dr Naji, who works in Galway, ... tells Lorna Siggins of the trauma he faced when two of his family were kidnapped in Baghdad. One of them is still missing.

Dr Nizar Naji cannot remember the precise time, but he remembers where he was. The respiratory medicine specialist was treating patients at Merlin Park Hospital in Galway when he received a telephone call a few weeks ago. It was a bad line, but he could hear a police radio blaring in the background.

It should have brought official news of some sort, for Dr Naji and all his family - most of whom live in Iraq - were on tenterhooks. Just a couple of days before, his 41-year-old brother Ahmed, a mechanical engineer living in Dublin, had been kidnapped in Baghdad.

Although the person at the end of the telephone line may have been wearing a police uniform, he was also a member of a militia - and looking for $60,000 (€50,163) to secure Ahmed's release.

Ahmed had become one of Iraq's daily "statistics", which gain international attention only when the target is high profile. The father of three, with a fourth child on the way, had been living in Ireland for the past four years, having been granted political asylum here. He had arrived in Baghdad 48 hours previously on a fortnight's visit to his elderly parents when he and his brother-in-law, Nathum Mohamed Ismael, who lives in Iraq, were "arrested". It was December 21st last, and Ahmed was one of a group of more than 50 Sunni Muslims who were rounded up in the west of the Iraqi capital, blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten and bundled into four-wheel drive vehicles. The convoy sped off, and the hostages were dispersed in small groups at private houses.

For 15 days, Ahmed, Nathum and another hostage were handcuffed together, and kept barefoot in an upstairs room about 1.5m square. The trio were beaten with metal bars on various parts of their bodies, were deprived of food and given just a few drops of water every two days. "They were forced to defecate where they stood, and at one point their captors attempted to suffocate them while trying to extract confessions out of them," Dr Naji says.

Begging for mercy, Ahmed explained he was an Irish resident and had a flight back to Dublin on January 6th.

Back in Ireland, his brother pursued every diplomatic avenue, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny. While they were both helpful, at one stage he found himself fielding calls from the captors at his place of work.

After 15 days, Ahmed was dropped in an isolated area of Baghdad. It was just the night before his return flight home.

Back in Ireland, he is still psychologically disturbed, unable to sleep, and has a fractured left shoulder. He will have to have plastic surgery for his nose.

"Ahmed still has pains and numbness all over his body, and his wrists bear the lacerations from the handcuffs, which tightened every time he tried to move," Dr Naji told The Irish Times. "Unfortunately, the last that Ahmed saw of Nathum was the night before his release.

"We do not know if he is still alive or not. His wife (my sister), and her five young children are distraught. Members of our family have been visiting the morgue every day," he says.

"When Ahmed was being held, the police called a few times demanding money. Despite my frequent efforts to get help from the US and British forces, they showed no interest.

"I gave the US military officials I spoke to full permission to tap my phone, and that of my family, so they could locate the criminals, but nothing came of it. At one point one of the US officers I spoke to asked me if I had any news. He was relying on me, back here in Galway, to update him!"

He emphasises his family's case is not isolated. "This is happening to people, happening to families, every single day in Iraq, as the human rights organisations on the ground have verified." he says. Terrified of the breakdown in law and order, Iraq's professionals are leaving the country if they can. One of Dr Naji's brother has already fled to Syria.

"My parents are elderly, and my mother had to come to Ireland for medical treatment last year. Iraq is our home but there seems to be no future for us there," he says.

"The military and the police force can do as they please, because the north Americans and British who recruited, trained and gave them authority - which is now being abused - don't want to face up to their gross mistake.

"Under the Geneva Convention, the occupying force has a duty to keep the population safe, but the US and British armies are not doing that. There is now chaos on the streets of Baghdad, beyond the Green Zone."

In his view, the occupying forces are condoning a form of ethnic cleansing which is targeting the Sunni population. "Although I am a Sunni, I am not a Saddam sympathiser," he emphasises. "I accept and state that he was a brutal dictator, and my family suffered under him. We were persecuted under his regime. I was not able to see my family for eight years, until he was removed from power.

"At the same time, Iraqi society was secular, and ethnic differences were not to the fore as they are now. These divisions, which the occupying forces are condoning, will kill the country in the long term. For women like my sisters, who are qualified teachers, it is a disaster.

"However, Saddam is yesterday's man, and his trial does not even concern the people of Baghdad - the real people, not the safe ones inside the Green Zone, who will tell you that what's worrying them is water and fuel and electricity, and figuring out how you go to the market when you or your wife could be kidnapped or murdered."

Dr Naji has been keeping in daily phone contact, but there has been no news of Nathum. Amnesty International's Irish branch has offered to do what it can. Several days ago, he phoned home to be told the distressing news that all of his family in Iraq had now gone into hiding.