The Disappeared of Iraq

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Many kidnapping victims are held captive in remote farmhouses in the countryside. But after a few days in the basement prison, Waddah came to believe he was in an urban environment. Although there were no windows, he could hear city traffic and, when the power went out, the sound of several generators starting up. The bread served was often warm and fresh, indicating there was a baker nearby. If his captors had neighbors, they were probably complicit in the kidnappings; they obviously didn't report the sound of gunshots within the house to the police. During one interrogation, Waddah was told not to contemplate an escape. "They said, 'Even if you manage to get out of the house, the people in the street will bring you back to us,'" he recalls.

Waddah soon found himself the longest-held captive in the basement, and the guards grew friendly. They helped him get a sense of the scale of the kidnapping operation. By his reckoning, at least 30 captives passed through the cells during his five-week stay. The guards hinted that at least two captives had been government employees. Instead of being ransomed, they were sold to a jihadist group. And the jihadis took a cut from the ransom collections in exchange for protection. The U.S. official says that is common practice among kidnappers: "We know that the kidnapping industry helps finance the terrorists."

Waddah also learned a little bit about the "emir," or leader of the criminal gang. The guards described him as a bold and brazen criminal who masterminded the kidnapping of many high-value targets: rich businessmen, government officials, even a tribal sheik. The gang leader had been a senior official in Saddam's dreaded intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. The emir was also an expert in torture, able to extract information from the most stubborn captives. But he rarely took part in the interrogations anymore; in fact, he only occasionally visited the house. While he concentrated on other, unspecified business interests, the kidnapping organization was run day to day by his trusted lieutenants, a pair of brothers from his tribe.

In Waddah's fourth week of captivity, one of the interrogators went down to his cell to inform him they had made some progress in contacting his family. Waddah had given them names of family members in Fallujah and Ramadi, along with directions to their homes. One of the addresses in Ramadi had checked out, and the person who lived there--an old friend who Waddah believed had been a fighter in an insurgent group--had agreed to find a phone number for his family. The interrogator said "our people in Baghdad" were also looking for Waddah's home. A few days later, the kidnappers said they had made contact with Waddah's family. But Haseeba and her other sons, believing him to be dead, had already held a wake for him. Now they refused to believe that he was alive, rejecting the kidnappers' ransom demand as either a terrible prank or an opportunist's attempt to capitalize on their loss. "They are not going to pay," the interrogator told Waddah. "We're not sure what to do with you." Later that day, Waddah was taken to the interrogation room--his first visit in nearly a week. He was hooded again because, the guards told him, the emir was going to be present and they didn't want Waddah to see him.