On March 8, armed men wearing police commando uniforms seized about 50 guards and employees of an Iraqi private security company.
The raid on al-Rawafid took place in the eastern Zayouna neighborhood of Baghdad.
As usual, Interior Minister Bayan Jabur was “upset” by the incident and ordered a detailed report, a high-ranking ministry official told the CNN.
Eyewitnesses and police in the area report seeing up to 50 staff being taken away from the firm's compound interior ministry pick-up trucks.
One interior ministry official told the BBC the raid was being investigated, but that those responsible were not associated with the Iraqi police. However, Reuter’s news agency says unnamed officials have told its reporters that the firm's employees had been arrested by police commandos.
When I first went to report on the incident, I had difficulty in finding the headquarters of the firm. People, mostly men, refused to tell us where the location is. No sign pointed out where the HQ is. “Let’s ask children,” I told my driver. “They are the ones who are going to tell us where the place is.”
After a 30-miniute search, a gathering of children riding their bicycles told us where and how the whole incident happened. When we arrived, three pale non-kidnapped members ran towards us. “Hold on guys! We are not kidnappers,” I said. “They were relieved as neither I nor my driver looked like terrorists or kidnappers. At first, they stammered when I told them I am a journalist. “No comment. That’s it,” one dark-skinned man said. “Yamawwad, alabakhtak, [come on!],” I said. “We are just journalists came to tell the story to the whole world,” didn’t work with him. Then, one of the three interrupted him and told me what happened under the condition not to mention his name.
On March 12, Jabur, the Interior Minister accused the abducted group of not doing enough to resist the kidnappers. Jabur said on state television “22 men were kidnapped and not 50” as first reported by interior ministry sources. "People dressed in camouflage uniforms took [the security guards] like sheep," said Jabur. "If they cannot defend themselves, who will do so?" OK now, how did you know, Mr. Minister? If a staff member of the firm told me that 50 were kidnapped, how come you say 22?
On March 18, Irakna News Agency, an Iraqi Newswires, widely read in Iraq, reported “American intelligence operating in Iraq was able to tape the incident”. The agency also said “the Ministries of Defense and Interior had denied any knowledge of the incident.”
An American reporter covering war in Iraq said the US army and embassy officials told her “no one they talked to knew anything about that.”
However, the news agency’s sources pointed out that “the American Ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, had seen the tape, which shows vehicles of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior as they were kidnapping the employees and the security guards of the company.” The Ambassador has sent a copy of the tape to the Minister of Interior, the agency said.
The new scandal of the Interior Minister, if proven true, would enhance American efforts aimed at relieving the minister of his post following a number of scandals related to the torture and arrest of detainees by the Ministry's forces and elements. But the question remains, if there is the tape, where is it and why wasn’t it shown to the public? And if there is no tape, why didn’t the US embassy tell the Iraqi public that read the news agency’s report if it was true or not.
