An Iraqi cleric's swift rise and fall
-
-
- ClipsFC
- added this
THULUYAH, Iraq - In October 2006, as the heat of an Iraqi summer was finally breaking, the blue eyes of Muthanna Youssef Hammoud glanced at four cars pulled to the side of the road in a tumultuous swath of northern Iraq then beholden to insurgents. "We didn't pay much attention," the wealthy businessman recalled.
Minutes later, a beige Toyota barreled in front of his blue BMW. A white Toyota blocked the street behind them. Alongside, the other two cars disgorged eight masked gunmen clad in black who fired a staccato burst in the air, then stuffed Hammoud and a friend into the trunks of the cars for a four-hour drive.
Their captors called the mastermind of the kidnapping "the sheik," orchestrating an odyssey that imprisoned the men in a half-dozen hideouts, some no more than a crumbling mud pen two feet high. Three weeks later, the sheik's men freed them after they paid $180,000 in ransom, collected in part by selling a gas station in Thuluyah.
The incident was so anonymous as to be forgotten. Hammoud and his friend survived, a feat in itself in the nadir of Iraq's carnage, where civilians in this town of vineyards and orchards along a bend in the Tigris River were sometimes beheaded with a shovel. But the voice of the mastermind lingered with Hammoud, and his recollection led Iraqi and U.S. soldiers this month to arrest Nadhim Khalil, a former insurgent leader known to his followers as Mullah Nadhim, who had become an American ally here.
Minutes later, a beige Toyota barreled in front of his blue BMW. A white Toyota blocked the street behind them. Alongside, the other two cars disgorged eight masked gunmen clad in black who fired a staccato burst in the air, then stuffed Hammoud and a friend into the trunks of the cars for a four-hour drive.
Their captors called the mastermind of the kidnapping "the sheik," orchestrating an odyssey that imprisoned the men in a half-dozen hideouts, some no more than a crumbling mud pen two feet high. Three weeks later, the sheik's men freed them after they paid $180,000 in ransom, collected in part by selling a gas station in Thuluyah.
The incident was so anonymous as to be forgotten. Hammoud and his friend survived, a feat in itself in the nadir of Iraq's carnage, where civilians in this town of vineyards and orchards along a bend in the Tigris River were sometimes beheaded with a shovel. But the voice of the mastermind lingered with Hammoud, and his recollection led Iraqi and U.S. soldiers this month to arrest Nadhim Khalil, a former insurgent leader known to his followers as Mullah Nadhim, who had become an American ally here.
-
- groups:
- Community, World News, US News
-
- tags:
- News, Current TV, World News, US News, 1 more
