Mosul (AsiaNews) – Nadir Mansour Koja, the young driver abducted June 22 in North Iraq as he travelled from Baghdad to Mosul is free and well. Local sources relayed the news to AsiaNews. The young man maintains his wife, 3 children, his parents and two widowed sisters and their families with his job.
News of the release of second young Christian originally from Batnaya and kidnapped June 20th, arrived once again from the Sunni stronghold of Mosul. In both cases a ransom was demanded but there is nothing to indicate that one was paid.
Kidnappings have for some time become a veritable industry in Iraq; observers on the ground maintain that however that kidnapping a Christian above all in the North has a second ulterior motive: it sends out a clear signal along the lines of “we can reach you anywhere, even where you believe to be safe”. The reference is to the Assyrian proposal to create a safe haven for Christians in the Nineveh Plain, bordering on Mosul. An increasing number of Christians in recent years have migrated north from the most dangerous cities, but security is now no longer a certainty, not even here.