Aban Abdel Malek Mahmoud Elias was an Iraqi Americancivil engineer who was born in Iraq, lived in Denver, Colorado, then returned to Iraq to help the people build back the country from the mass destructions that happened in the war with Iran. According to this brother, Elias worked with a relative on road projects.[1] He was kidnapped on May 3, 2004, near his home in Baghdad. He was shown being held hostage in a video on Al Arabiya television station. While blindfolded and posed against a stone wall, he was shown pleading for help. A transcript provided by Al Arabiya quoted him as saying in English:
"My name is Aban Elias from Denver, Colorado. I am a civil engineer working in Baghdad ... and we are working with the Pentagon. ... I was kidnapped, and I call upon Muslim organizations to interfere to release me."
As an engineer working on road projects in Iraq, he would reportedly coordinate with the Pentagon. He has not been seen or heard from since. Aban Elias was married and had three sons, who were aged 1, 4 and 6 at the time of his kidnapping.[1]
Sadr City, formerly known as Al-Thawra and Saddam City, is a suburb district of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. It was built in 1959 by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim and named Al-Rafidain District. After the US-led invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam, it was unofficially renamed Sadr City after Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr.
The Occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) was characterized by a large United States military deployment on Iraqi territory, beginning with the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003 which overthrew the Ba'ath Party government of Saddam Hussein and ending with the departure of US troops from the country in 2011. Troops for the occupation came primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, but 29 other nations also provided troops, and there were varying levels of assistance from Japan and other countries, as well as tens of thousands of private military company personnel.
The Mahdi Army was an Iraqi Shia militia created by Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003 and disbanded in 2008.
Paul Marshall Johnson Jr. was an American helicopter engineer who lived in Saudi Arabia. In 2004, he was taken hostage by militants and his murder was recorded on video tape.
Kim Sun-il was a South Korean interpreter and Christian missionary who was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Salafi jihadist militant group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
Kenneth John Bigley was a British civil engineer who was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad, Iraq, on 16 September 2004, along with his colleagues, U.S. citizens Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong. Following the murders of Hensley and Armstrong by beheading over the course of three days, Bigley was killed in the same manner two weeks later, despite the attempted intervention of the Muslim Council of Britain and the indirect intervention of the British government. Videos of the killings were posted on websites and blogs.
Margaret Hassan was an Irish aid worker who had worked in Iraq for many years until she was abducted by unidentified assailants in Baghdad during the Iraqi insurgency. Her captors subsequently filmed and released a video of her stating that she was living her "last hours" before she pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq; she has not been seen since, and her remains were never recovered.
The Islamic Army in Iraq was an underground Islamist militant organization formed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led Coalition forces, and the subsequent collapse of the Ba'athist regime headed by Saddam Hussein. IAI was regarded as one of the largest, sophisticated and most influential Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq that led an asymmetrical military insurgency against Coalition forces. The group became known for its grisly videos of kidnappings and attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Shosei Koda was a Japanese citizen who was kidnapped and later beheaded in Iraq on 29 October 2004, by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq while touring the country. He was the first Japanese person beheaded in Iraq.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
Douglas Wood was an Australian construction engineer who had worked with the American military, and was held hostage in Iraq for six weeks between May and June 2005, before being rescued in an army raid on a house.
Members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking foreign hostages in Iraq beginning in April 2004. Since then, in a dramatic instance of Islamist kidnapping they have taken captive more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, dozens of hostages were killed and others rescued or freed. In 2004, executions of captives were often filmed, and many were beheaded. However, the number of the recorded killings decreased significantly. Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts. The United States Department of State Hostage Working Group was organized by the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 to monitor foreign hostages in Iraq.
Roy Hallums is an American contractor who was kidnapped in Iraq on November 1, 2004. He was held in Iraq for 311 days and freed on September 7, 2005.
Norman Frank Kember is an emeritus professor of biophysics at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and a Christian pacifist active in campaigning on issues of war and peace. As a Baptist, he is a long-standing member of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. As a conscientious objector to military service, he worked in a hospital in the early 1950s, which stimulated his interest in medical physics. He has been involved with the "Peace Zone" at the annual Greenbelt Festival.
The Christian Peacemaker hostage crisis involved four human rights workers of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who were held hostage in Iraq from November 26, 2005 by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. One hostage, Tom Fox, was killed, and the remaining three freed in a military operation on March 23, 2006.
Jill Carroll is an American former journalist who worked for news organizations such as The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and the Christian Science Monitor. On January 7, 2006 while working for the Monitor, she was kidnapped in Iraq, attracting worldwide support for her release. Carroll was freed on March 30, 2006. After her release, Carroll wrote a series of articles for the Monitor on her recollection of her experiences in Iraq. She participated in a fellowship at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and returned to work for the Monitor. She later retired from journalism and began working as a firefighter.
In the 2010 Baghdad church massacre, six suicide bombers of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) militant group attacked a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad during Sunday evening Mass, on 31 October, 2010, and began killing the worshipers. ISI was a militant group which aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state in Iraq.
Douglas Joseph Shimshon Al-Bazi is a Chaldean Catholic Church parish priest in Auckland, New Zealand, as the leader of the Chaldean Catholic congregation there. He formerly served in Baghdad, Iraq.
Harmeet Singh Sooden is a Canadian-New Zealand anti-war activist who volunteered for the international NGO Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He was held captive in Baghdad with three others for almost four months until being freed by multinational forces on 23 March 2006.
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