The Multi-National Force Iraq just released a video of Iraqi Special Forces rescuing an 11 year old boy who had been kidnapped by a ring of terrorists near Kirkuk. The kidnappers demanded $100,000 from the boy’s father, a mechanic. They told him if he didn’t pay, they would behead the child.
Acting on intelligence reports, members of the elite Iraqi Special Forces raided a home, arrested eight admitted al-Qaeda followers and rescued the boy. The video tells the entire story:
Subsequent investigation revealed that this group had kidnapped more than twenty other victims before being caught.
Richard S. Lowry is the author of The Gulf War Chronicles and Marines in the Garden of Eden.
This was not a politically motivated kidnapping. These a**holes were trying to extort money from everyday citizens to finance their operations. This is the kind of senseless terror spread by al-Qaeda.
Fortunately, this boy was rescued. Here is the raw transcript I received along with the video:
Rescue operation
Iraqi soldiers running. “Go, let’s go, and let’s move.”
“Don’t come outside. Tell them to open the door. Open the door. Come out. Don’t touch anything.”
Soldiers break down the door and order everyone inside the room not to move. “Don’t move, no one moves.”
“Soldiers telling the man inside the room not to move, then they ordered him to move to the other side.”
The little boy come’s out of the room. The soldiers start talking to him trying to calm him down. They asked him to calm down. “Come on sweetheart don’t be scared, what’s your name? Is your name Omar? No, Ammar.”
The soldiers reply: “he is the one”.
The soldiers took the boy and departed the place. After getting out of the house, the soldiers took the boy and sat out in the back of a truck, they put the boy on the phone with his family. The boy told his family that, “I am rescued and I am doing well.” The soldiers in the background saying: “poor boy”, then the soldiers tell him that they “will be taking him home to his family.”
The soldiers took the boy back to his family’s house. People in the neighborhood started around cheering and praising God. The mother started running towards her son. She was screaming and crying her son’s name out. “Ammar, my son, my dearest son”. (The mother was speaking Turkmen language).
An interview with the boy’s family:
His father is speaking in Kurdish saying: “I’m grateful to these soldiers, grateful to this party, to all of you here.”
The reporter: “How many days was your son kidnapped for”? (Speaking Kurdish)
The boy’s father: “Four days”.
The reporter: “How much money did the kidnappers asked for as a ransom in order to release your son”?
The boy’s father: “They asked for a hundred thousand dollars as a ransom”.
The reporter: “What did you tell the kidnappers”?
The boy’s father: “We told them that we don’t have money; the kidnapers finally reduced the ransom to eighty thousand dollars”.
The reporter: “What would have happened if you would have failed to pay the ransom”?
The Father: “The kidnappers told us that if we fail to pay the ransom, they will behead my son, and put his head in the garbage can in front of my house”.
The reporter: “What do you do for living”?
The father: “I work at a place called (the industrial area), as a mechanic”.
The reporter asked the mother to comment: She starts speaking in Turkmen language, and then they ask her to switch to Arabic or Kurdish. So, she start’s speaking Arabic saying that she is “grateful to every one, and she very much appreciates the efforts of all the people who contributed to the rescue of her son”. Then she says: “I don’t know what to say, I’m speechless, God bless you, God bless you all”
Richard S. Lowry is the author of The Gulf War Chronicles and Marines in the Garden of Eden.
How long have we been telling people they are just a bunch of crooks and opportunistic thugs? I remember this discussion at the start of the ‘insurgency’. Good score for the goodguys.