Kidnapped Athletes Found Dead in Iraq

[struggle4progress]

Source: Associated Press

By SAMEER N. YACOUB

BAGHDAD - The remains of 13 members of an Iraqi tae kwon do team kidnapped last year have been found in western Iraq, police and hospital officials said Saturday.

The team had been driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan in May 2006, when their convoy was stopped and all 15 athletes abducted along a road between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, in Anbar province. ~snip~

The athletes were members of a private sports club that hopes to one day send members to the Olympics. ~snip~

Gunmen also kidnapped the chairman of Iraq's National Olympic Committee and at least 30 other officials last year, including the presidents of the tae kwon do and boxing federations, in a bold daylight raid on a sports conference in the heart of Baghdad. Iraq's national wrestling coach, a Sunni, was killed around the same time in a Shiite district of Baghdad.

Read more: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2007/06/16/ap/sports/d8pps7o02.txt

[MADem]

1. Ah yes, freedom is on the march!

Athletes and sports officials have increasingly become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts in Iraq, either as part of tit-for-tat violence between Shiites and Sunnis or for ransom.

Victims have included the Sunni head of one of Iraq's leading soccer clubs, an Iraqi international soccer referee, a top player on the Iraqi Olympic soccer team and a national volleyball player.

A blind Iraqi athlete and paralympics coach were kidnapped last year but later released unharmed after sports officials said their abductors determined neither man was linked to the Sunni insurgency....

[blm]

2. Religious extremists think sports is unholy - Christian Dominionists think the same

about women in sports.

[MADem]

3. It's all those shorts, doncha know...bare skin...sweat....!!!! nt

[TechBear_Seattle]

9. Not sports in general, but some sports in particular

I've known a few fundamentalists who believed that karate, tae kwan do and other martial arts were inherently evil, as they were based on "heathenish" ideas like qi. And you probably do not want to know their ideas about yoga.

[marshall]

11. Do you think that is why these athletes were killed?

It's hard to figure out.

[TechBear_Seattle]

12. It is certainly a possibility

At least as much as fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims live in a mental world of very sharply defined boundaries. If you are not 110% in line with what the fanatics believe, then you are a back-slider who has abandoned the One True Faith. And the Quran is very clear that back-sliders who refuse to recant and return to the One True Faith must be put to death.

[Dr.Phool]

4. Where was Chuck Norris when they needed him?

[wicket]

5. Oh god

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[roody]

6. Mission accomplished. eom

[Aviation Pro]

7. In the 2001: A Space Odyssey series....

Arthur C. Clarke painted a picture of an Earth that had rid itself of religion. That may be closer than we think.

On edit: I'm an idiot. Kubrick directed the film.

[tblue37]

10. But it was based on a novel by Clarke.(eom)

[diane in sf]

8. So was this done by a Negroponte death squad? Or an indigenous

death squad?

[wicket]

13. kick

:kick: