Martial arts chief found dead in Iraq

Martial arts chief found dead in Iraq

BAGHDAD The vice president of Iraq’s taekwondo union was found dead south of Baghdad yesterday after being kidnapped on his way home from his sister’s wake, the Iraqi Olympic Commitee said.

Walid Mohammed Abdullah, 43, was abducted and killed near the town of Mahmudiyah in the same Sunni insurgent stronghold where three US soldiers went missing 10 days ago after a pre-dawn raid that killed five of their comrades.

“We regret these sorts of incidents which befall athletes at a time when they are struggling to represent the country and serve Iraqi athletics,” committee president Bashar Mustafa said.

“These acts reflect this dangerous period that Iraqi athletes are confronted with at the present time,” he added.

The attack comes a year after 15 members of the Iraqi taekwondo team were kidnapped while travelling between Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. They were never seen again.

Abdullah is the latest Iraqi athlete to fall victim to the country’s spiralling mayhem, which has given rise to powerful kidnap gangs that target prominent Iraqis.

Last Saturday, Wali Mohammed Ali, the financial manager of the Zawraa Soccer club, was kidnapped in the Fadhel neighbourhood near Baghdad’s city centre.

His abducters released him after he paid a $50,000 ransom, but not before killing his son, an engineering student at Baghdad University, during the course of the negotiations.

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=May2007&file=World_News2007052372022.xml

Weird target. Quite a mess.

That is really sad.

I’ll be honest with you people, I was really hoping it was a ninja, just for irony’s sake.