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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. [1] 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.
The motives for these kidnappings include:
The following is a list of known civilian foreign nationals who have been taken hostage in Iraq.
Abu Sayyaf, officially known by the Islamic State as the Islamic State – East Asia Province, is a Jihadist militant and pirate group that followed the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. It is based in and around Jolo and Basilan islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines, where for more than five decades, Moro groups had been engaged in an insurgency seeking to make Moro Province independent. The group is considered violent and is responsible for the Philippines' worst terrorist attack, the bombing of MV Superferry 14 in 2004, which killed 116 people. The name of the group was derived from Arabic abu, and sayyaf. As of April 2023, the group was estimated to have about 20 members, down from 1,250 in 2000. They use mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles.
Events in the year 2004 in Iraq.
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.
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.
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 while touring the country and later beheaded in Iraq on 29 October 2004 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was the first Japanese person beheaded 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.
Akihiko Saito was a Japanese security specialist adviser who was taken hostage by the Jaish Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq in 2005.
Susanne Kristina Osthoff is a German archaeologist who had worked in Iraq from 1991 until being taken hostage there on 25 November 2005. She was freed by her captors on 18 December 2005.
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.
The 2006 abduction of Russian diplomats in Iraq took place on June 3, 2006, in Baghdad, Iraq when Iraqi insurgents ambushed a car belonging to the Russian Embassy. Vitaly Titov,, was killed in the attack and the other four people in the car – Fyodor Zaitsev, Rinat Agliuglin, Oleg Fedoseyev, and Anatoly Smirnov – were abducted.
Six western tourists and their two guides were kidnapped in the Liddarwat area of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, India on 4 July 1995 by forty militants from the Kashmiri Islamist militant organisation Harkat-ul-Ansar, under the pseudonym of Al-Faran, in order to secure the release of Harkat leader Masood Azhar and other militants.
Kidnapping and hostage taking has become a common occurrence in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Kidnappers include Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters and common criminal elements.
The following is a list of known foreign hostages captured in Somalia, particularly since the start of the Ethiopian intervention and the 2009–present phase of the civil war.
This is a list of known foreign hostages in Pakistan.
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.
James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen martyred by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
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