One of the wealthiest men in Iraq and his son were kidnapped from their luxury home in a bloody abduction that saw their five bodyguards murdered and laid out in the front garden — each with a bullet wound to the head, police said on Friday.
The kidnapping comes amid a spree of hostage-taking over the past months of both foreigners and of large numbers of Iraqis, many seized by criminal gangs for whom pure financial gain is the main motive.
Ghalib Kubba had just returned from travelling with his family on Thursday evening when gunmen wearing military uniforms broke into his house and kidnapped him and his son Hassan.
Police said the gunmen drove up in a minibus outside Kubba’s two-storey walled villa in the wealthy neighbourhood of Yarmuk in western Baghdad, but neighbors said they heard no gunfire.
Mohammed, who lives nearby, was told by local children that the gate to the compound was open at 10pm when he went in to investigate.
He said he found Kubba’s five bodyguards laid out in the front garden in a pool of blood, each with a bullet through the head.
Kubba’s wife, his son’s wife and his two grandchildren, were huddled inside the house, weeping. Soon after they called their driver who spirited them away.
One of the most prominent citizens of Iraq’s second city of Basra, Kubba was appointed in April 2003 by the British in the aftermath of the invasion to head the city council and help rebuild the city.
He is the chairperson of al-Basra National Bank for Investment, where his son is managing director. Kubba senior also presides the city’s chamber of commerce and owns a number of other businesses.
Calls to the interior ministry’s hotline reporting kidnappings jumped from nine a week in mid-December to 26 a week by mid-January, according to the United States military.
Observers in Iraq often attribute sudden spikes in kidnappings to a need for money by criminal and insurgent gangs.
“We are concerned about the numbers of kidnapping that we’re seeing,” said US forces spokesperson Major-General Rick Lynch to reporters on February 9.
“We do see that the insurgents are in need of money, they are in need of assets to conduct their attacks and a lot of the kidnapping we’re seeing is criminal related activity,” he added.
According to a report published this moth by the Washington-based Brookings Institute, a thinktank, the rate of kidnappings in Baghdad rose from an average of two a day in January 2004 to 10 a day in December 2004.
Nationwide, the number averaged 30 a day in December 2005, the institute said, adding that such incidents were probably under-reported.
The kidnapping of foreigners in Iraq, which has also increased, is only the tip of the iceberg in a country where abduction have become a real industry.
Foreigners currently held include four peace activists, an American, a Briton and two Canadians who were seized in November, two Kenyan engineers kidnapped in a bloody road ambush, an American freelance journalist, Jill Carrol, seized on January 7, and two German engineers abducted on January 24.
An estimated 425 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since 2003, while Iraq’s interior ministry estimates that 5 000 Iraqis were abducted, mostly for ransom, between December 2003 and April 2005.
Elsewhere in Iraq, four policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on Friday morning in the northern city of Kirkuk, destroying their patrol car. Another policeman was hurt in a similar incident in northern Bagdhad.
Four unidentified bodies of men who had been shot dead were also recovered on Friday in the north of the capital.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from southern Iraq amid growing pressure on London following the broadcast of a video showing British troops beating up Iraqis.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran requests the immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra,” Mottaki said on a visit to Lebanon, referring to Iraq’s main southern city where Britain’s 8 000 troops are headquartered. – AFP