U.S. captures 2 over abduction of troops in Iraq

[Gunny]

Reuters
updated 4:32 a.m. CT, Thurs., Dec. 27, 2007
BAGHDAD - Iraqi police and U.S. forces have captured two militants suspected of involvement in the abduction of three U.S. soldiers south of Baghdad earlier this year, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

The soldiers went missing after their patrol was ambushed on May 12 in Mahmudiya in the "Triangle of Death," an insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad. The body of one of them was pulled from the Euphrates River near Baghdad later in the same month.

Their abduction triggered a massive manhunt in palm groves south of Baghdad in the middle of the deadliest three-month period of the war for U.S. troops. Iraq has since become far quieter, but the incident remains a touchstone for U.S. forces.

The U.S. military said in a statement it caught the two suspects believed to have ties with al-Qaida on Monday and Tuesday in Ramadi in the western province of Anbar.

One of the men was believed to have "facilitated the kidnapping and is reported to have used his residence to aid in the hiding and transport of the captured soldiers," it said.

Al-Qaida had claimed responsibility for the attack, in which four other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi translator were killed, but offered no proof that it held the missing soldiers.

more ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22405861/

If the charges prove true, I hope they are tried in Iraqi court so they will hang.