Blog: watching a kidnap, Iraq style

A former paratrooper was identified last night as one of the five men captured in Baghdad as special forces and diplomats spent another frustrating day searching for them.

Alex MacLachlan, 28, a father of one, was one of four bodyguards abducted from a government building along with the computer expert they were protecting.

Helen MacLachlan, from Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, said that she and her husband had been told of their son’s abduction by the Canadian security company for which he worked.

“We are just so upset and shocked,” she told the South Wales Evening Post. “We just want to know our son is safe. Someone from GardaWorld phoned us, but we don’t know anything more other than what we see on the television.

“GardaWorld and the Foreign Office have both got family liaison officers to stay in touch with us, but we just don’t know anything yet.”

She said that their other son, Ross, 30, who is serving with the Army in Kuwait, had been told that he could return home.

Officials admitted that there was no indication as to who took the five on Tuesday, despite a second day of raids across the city. No group has claimed responsibility publicly for the brazen abductions from a Finance Ministry building.

US and Iraqi officials have blamed al-Mahdi Army, with General David Petraeus, the Commander of the US forces in Iraq, saying that the Shia militia “will be profoundly sorry” if it carried out the abductions.

The militia, loyal to the Shia cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, firmly rejects any responsibility for the raid.

The Iraqi Government said in a statement that it was doing all it could to ensure that the men were freed. In a sign that the threat of hostage-taking remains high, the British Embassy in Baghdad updated its travel advice, suggesting British citizens reassessed their security arrangements and warning them that “further kidnaps may be planned”.

US soldiers helping in the hunt for the men conducted raids around the city. The operations are also part of Washington’s “surge” plan to quell the violence in Baghdad.

Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Mahdi Army, bore the brunt of the US action. Soldiers used armoured vehicles to smash their way into homes in the impoverished Shia quarter. Two suspects were arrested, but it was not clear whether this was connected to the hunt.

With no definite leads, the crisis team put together by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after the abductions was still in London, awaiting a summons to Baghdad.

Cobra, the Whitehall emergency committee, held a third meeting, but Cabinet Office sources said that there had been no developments.

Kim Howells, the Foreign Office Minister, who was in Basra on Wednesday, contacted the Iraqi Foreign Minister to ask about developments. He was told that the Iraqi Government was determined to find those behind the kidnapping, the Foreign Office said.

The Iraqi authorities were said to be confident that the men had not been taken out of the city. All exits have been secured with armed roadblocks since the “surge” began.

The US State Department reported yesterday that two Iraqi employees of the US Embassy in Baghdad had disappeared. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq had issued a statement on the internet saying that on Monday it had executed a man and a woman working at the Embassy.

Detailed floor plans for the new US Embassy being built in Baghdad have appeared online in a serious breach of security.

Computer-generated projections of the heavily fortified compound were posted to the website of the architectural company designing it. They were removed yesterday after the US Government intervened.

“We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas,” said a State Department spokesman. “This kind of information out in the public domain detracts from that effort.”

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