Severed fingers of five Western contractors were sent to the U.S. military in Iraq, giving the men's relatives hope that they are still alive, a brother of one of the missing men said.
The men were abducted in two separate incidents that occurred a month and a half apart more than two years ago, a U.S. government official said Thursday in Washington.
The Austrian weekly magazine News first reported the delivery of the five fingers in Wednesday's edition, citing unidentified authorities working on the case.
Patrick Reuben, a Minneapolis police officer whose twin brother, Paul Reuben, is among the missing, said late Wednesday the FBI told his family members that "the fingers were confirmed to be those of the hostages."
Patrick Reuben said the news of the severed fingers was "shocking," but that the initial word the family got was "much more serious than that. Later on we found that it was fingers that were recovered and that the DNA confirmed it was the hostages."
Four of the men were guards for a convoy ambushed near the Kuwaiti border on Nov. 16, 2006. The fifth, Ronald J. Withrow, 40, of Lubbock, Texas, was a contractor working for JPI Worldwide and abducted on Jan. 5, 2007 near Basra.
In addition to Reuben, those abducted in the earlier incident were Jonathon Cote, 25, of Getzville, N.Y.; Joshua Munns, 25, of Redding, Calif.; and Bert Nussbaumer, 26, of Vienna, Austria, said the U.S. government official in Washington. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.
A fifth hostage taken in the Nov. 16, 2006 ambush was John Young, 45, of Lee's Summit, Mo. None of his fingers was sent to the U.S. military.
In a statement, the FBI declined to confirm the men had been identified by fingers.
"The FBI has received DNA evidence and is conducting an examination," spokesman Richard Kolko said. "We understand this is a very difficult time for the families and discussing this matter further in the media is not appropriate."
The four men kidnapped in the Nov. 16, 2006 incident were working for Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based private security company. Men in Iraqi police uniforms ambushed a convoy near the southern city of Safwan.
Posted by: justanotherparatrooper
Religion of peace strikes again...fuckin assholes!
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