Missing soldier believed alive

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A senior U.S. military spokesman said Thursday that an Iraqi American soldier kidnapped in Baghdad 10 days ago was believed to be alive and in the hands of his original captors.

Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell identified the soldier as 41-year-old reservist Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie and said that al-Taayie was visiting his in-laws and his wife on Oct. 23, the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, when he was abducted by three carloads of armed men. Since then, the military has conducted intensive searches for the soldier, who moved to the United States as a teenager and returned to Iraq as a translator in the U.S. Army Reserve in November 2005, Caldwell said.

Members of al-Taayie’s family said in interviews this week that they had warned him they were being watched and to be careful on his visits. They said his wife, Israa Abdul-Satar, 26, a local science student whom al-Taayie married in February 2005, and two of her siblings had tried to fight off the abductors when they came to grab him.

Shaimaa Abdul Satar, Israa’s younger sister, said she was walking with the couple and her brother Omar to al-Taayie’s motorcycle a block away from her parents’ house about 4:30 p.m. on Eid when two armed men pulled up and tried to force al-Taayie into a white Mercedes. They fought the men off and took shelter in an uncle’s nearby apartment, Shaimaa said, but about five minutes later three cars with no license plates arrived, and armed men stormed the building and abducted al-Taayie.

Shaimaa and others in her family identified the leader of the group that kidnapped al-Taayie as local gangster Abu Rami, whose real name, they said, is Majid al-Qaissy.

Caldwell, in a weekly press briefing, said that more than 2,000 U.S. troops and 1,000 Iraqi soldiers have conducted 37 missions in the capital searching for al-Taayie. He said one U.S. soldier has been killed and eight U.S. and two Iraqi soldiers wounded in the operations.

Most of the raids have been in the eastern parts of the capital, including Sadr City, where U.S. forces recently enforced a six-day closure that was lifted two days ago. At the time, the U.S. military said its mission was twofold: find the missing soldier, and capture a man named Abu Deraa, who is considered Iraq’s most notorious Shiite death squad leader.

“At this point, we believe the ones who kidnapped Ahmed currently still have him,” Caldwell said.

Asked if the U.S. military had been in direct or indirect contact with the kidnappers, Caldwell said, “There is ongoing dialogue that is being done at different levels at this time, but it would be inappropriate for me to state with whom or at what level.”