Suspect arrested for murder of Iraq's entire taekwondo team

[SanHeChuan]

Suspect arrested for murder of Iraq's entire taekwondo team (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Suspect_arrested_for_murder_of_Iraq%27s_entire_tae kwondo_team?curid=140002)


Officials in Iraq have anounced the arrest in Anbar of a man suspected of abducting and killing all fifteen members of the national taekwondo team. The fifteen sportsmen were ambushed in May 2006.

The team was traveling in convoy towards Jordan to attend a training camp when they were stopped by gunmen. The skeletal remains of thirteen of them were recovered near the highway the following year and the other two remain missing. The attack occurred near Khalidiyah between Fallujah and Ramadi.

US forces and Iraqi commandos made the joint arrest on September 24 and it was announced yesterday. There are no details released on the suspect, but he is reported to have possible links with other terror attacks. The US military did not state in their announcement how they identified the suspect. Victims' relatives have said they are pleased at the news. "We are still overwhelmed by sadness and bitterness, but the arrest of one of the killers will bring some relief to us," said victim Ahmed Ali's cousin Ali Hussein Hamid.

Sportsplayers and officials were regularly targeted by insurgents in 2006 and 2007. According to Chelsea Carter writing for the Associated Press, the slaying of the taekwondo team "became one of the symbols of Iraq's lawlessness during its worse years of sectarian violence."


Suspect arrested in Iraqi taekwondo team murders (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD9AVR40O0)

[GeneChing]

...with the Busted martial artists thread (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48947). I might not. If it picks up discussion (or I just forget about it) I won't.

[lkfmdc]

wow, something is really wrong with this world

[David Jamieson]

wow, something is really wrong with this world

lol. surely you are not only realizing this now?

p.s it's not the world that has something wrong with it.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Hey, I don't like what TKD has become too, but SHEESSHHH !!!

[David Jamieson]

Hey, I don't like what TKD has become too, but SHEESSHHH !!!

too soon dude, too soon.



:D

[Lucas]

hey i needed that joke like kennedy needed a hole in the head

[karateguy]

bless their families.. this is really sad and pointless..

[Hebrew Hammer]

lol. surely you are not only realizing this now?

p.s it's not the world that has something wrong with it.

Stop calling me Shirley! :)

[GeneChing]

What a tragic story.

Slain athletes’ families demand justice (http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=317068&version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17)
AFP/Baghdad
Relatives of the members of Iraq’s taekwondo team who were kidnapped and murdered in 2006 appealed for justice yesterday after Iraqi and US forces arrested a man in connection with the attack.
The abduction of the 15-member national team shocked both Iraq and the world, and came as the country was engulfed in sectarian violence that killed tens of thousands of people in 2006 and 2007.
Iraqi commandos, with American advisers present, arrested the suspect on September 24 in the western province of Anbar where the kidnapping took place, the US military said in a statement.
“The suspect is also believed to be involved in multiple terrorist activities and crimes against the country of Iraq,” it added.
Fifteen members of the Iraqi national taekwondo team—all Shias—were kidnapped in May 2006 as they drove back from a tournament in Jordan through Sunni Anbar province.
Thirteen of their bodies were found a year later, while two others have not yet been recovered.
Families of the team called for the right to meet the suspect and demanded justice.
“We want to ask him ‘why?’” Jabbar Houssuni, whose son Ali was one of the kidnapped athletes, told AFP from his home in the predominantly Shia northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City.
“What was the reason, what was the motivation? They were athletes, carrying the Iraqi flag—they were peaceful. None of them were armed.”
Adil Hussein Ajar, whose two brothers Ali and Alaa were also among those kidnapped, said he still had “the hope that the killers will be arrested and their (the athletes’) blood will not have been taken without punishment.”

[David Jamieson]

What a tragic story.

what's even more tragic will be the implemented so called "iraqi justice"

which is basically you hang the suspect without a trial and then spit on his corpse.

That country is messed up. Crimes against the country of Iraq? wtf? Arrested by US forces for that?

The whole story stinks.

It's too bad those guys got killed. But lets not kid ourselves, Iraq is an occupied war zone and stuff like that happens. Way more innocent people have been killed by US ordinance in Iraq than this one tkd team by another Iraqi.

it's almost fortuitous that this event can be played upon so people ignore the continued occupation of Iraq by US forces.

just sayin...

[lkfmdc]

just sayin...

yeah, nothing screams justice more than kidnapping completely innocent people, torturing and killing them :rolleyes:

By the way, the founder of Islam would be HORRIFIED at stories like these

[sanjuro_ronin]

yeah, nothing screams justice more than kidnapping completely innocent people, torturing and killing them :rolleyes:

By the way, the founder of Islam would be HORRIFIED at stories like these

Here is the thing with the writings of the Koran and Mohammed, they were written during a time of conflict and war and certain parts are "justifiable" under that context, other parts are truly just "sign of the times" and are taken out of context.
There is lots of peace and love taught in the Koran, too bad that the only thing most people know of Islam is what they see and know of from extremists.
Imagine if our view of Christianity was pro-lifers bombing abortion clinics or bible thumbing fundamentalists advocating the assasination of a world leader, or if our only view of Judaisim was seeing Jewish soldiers shooting muslim children.
How would we view those religions?

[lkfmdc]

Here is the thing with the writings of the Koran and Mohammed, they were written during a time of conflict and war and certain parts are "justifiable" under that context, other parts are truly just "sign of the times" and are taken out of context.
There is lots of peace and love taught in the Koran, too bad that the only thing most people know of Islam is what they see and know of from extremists.
Imagine if our view of Christianity was pro-lifers bombing abortion clinics or bible thumbing fundamentalists advocating the assasination of a world leader, or if our only view of Judaisim was seeing Jewish soldiers shooting muslim children.
How would we view those religions?

Islam is a religion of conflict and Mohammed was a warrior, but note that in all those battles, when they took prisoners, they took good care of those prisoners until they made arrangements to ransom them back... some stayed in Mohammed's house!

[Yung Apprentice]

hey i needed that joke like kennedy needed a hole in the head

I'm still laughing at this! Only thing missing on that, was the rimshot!

[David Jamieson]

yeah, nothing screams justice more than kidnapping completely innocent people, torturing and killing them :rolleyes:

By the way, the founder of Islam would be HORRIFIED at stories like these

yeah, can you say rendition flight?

[David Jamieson]

as an aside :

The bible is filled with praise for what we moderns would deem murderers. (David, Jacob, etc). This covers lots of weirdness for the jewish and christian portion of the messed up ideas from religious texts that for some reason not many people want to deal with.

The Quran, has plenty of weirdness in it's own right in that regard in a similar vein.

It is the more secular leanings of religious establishments where we see the real hatred and intolerance that religion by it's very nature of exclusivity carried out.

So, it is the splinter groups who get their inspiration from their religious followings who act upon this zeal and it is those same people who act that are rejected by teh mainstream of the establishment.

The truth is, that people fight and kill under the pretext of gods will every single day.

Clearly, religion is not the answer in that respect. In fact, religion seems pretty divisive as a whole. If all it dealt with was spiritual pursuit, then I'd be all for it. But to the contrary, all too often it leaves the realm of spiritual pursuit and comes into the realm of reality whereby people, like you and me, enact their beliefs and force them onto others through powers they have access to.

Presidents going back for a few admins all make a big deal of putting on a kipa and stuffing a prayer into the western wall. they make a big deal about "god bless america" they make a big deal about their religion.

IMO they spend far too much time focused on this antiquated thinking and not enough time in dealing with the all to humanist and all too secular problems of the world.

talk about god doesn't fill bellies and won't help towards an engineering degree that will bring about a system of fresh water for a village in north africa now will it?

even worse is the expectation of many soup kitchens that you must listen to someone droning out of the gospels just so you can get a piece of bread and a bowl of soup.

no faith? no food. Bad policy.

[sanjuro_ronin]

We need to realize that the "inspire" writers of the OT were products of their time, yes they wrote down horrific things as being the "will of God" and even "pleasing to God", and in their view it probably was:
God is all-knowing and all-powerful, if he "allows" this to happen then he is condoning it, even "happy" with it.
The old "silence condones" point of view.
That is why when horrific things happened to them ( the hebrews for example) they still believed it was the "will of God" and "pleasing to God" that they suffer.
In their view it was the way it was.

[David Jamieson]

We need to realize that the "inspire" writers of the OT were products of their time, yes they wrote down horrific things as being the "will of God" and even "pleasing to God", and in their view it probably was:
God is all-knowing and all-powerful, if he "allows" this to happen then he is condoning it, even "happy" with it.
The old "silence condones" point of view.
That is why when horrific things happened to them ( the hebrews for example) they still believed it was the "will of God" and "pleasing to God" that they suffer.
In their view it was the way it was.

The convenience of using an imaginary being to justofy actions for and against you is what keeps that stuff alive.

"oh, but bad things happened to us too, so therefore, we are going to bomb you and if god doesn't punish us for it, we'll assume it's ok!"

Yes, this type of thinking isn't really thinking at all, this type of reason, is not reason at all.

In essence, using "god" in any way shape or form to justify actions whereby you get harmed or harm someone else is at the base of it, wrong.