Kidnapped Iraqi Christian Politician Contacts Sweden Family

The leader of an Iraqi Christian party who was kidnapped by armed men last month, has contacted his family in Sweden by mobile telephone, Swedish media reported on Monday.

According to the Agence-France Presse news agency, Minas Ibrahim al-Yussufi, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Iraq, was kidnapped on Jan. 28 after he took a taxi to party headquarters in the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Yussufi, who holds Swedish citizenship, had returned to Iraq after living in Sweden to partake in politics following the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

After his disappearance last month, Yussufi reportedly called his family on Saturday, according to Yussufi’s son Avin.

"He said he was being held by 15 armed men," Avin told Swedish local daily Joenkoepings-Posten.

Yussufi’s daughter Ronah also spoke to her father for about a minute. "He sounded pressed, like he couldn’t speak freely. He didn’t know where he was and couldn’t say if he had been beaten," she told the paper.

Ronan said the family had received a text message on Feb. 1 from Yussufi’s mobile phone in which an unidentified group said they had kidnapped him "for his own good, so that nothing will happen to him."

The Swedish foreign ministry has informed AFP that Sweden’s embassy in Amman was looking into the matter.




Kenneth Chan
Ecumenical Press