Top Insurgents Escaped Prison Days After Iraq Took Over

It remains unknown how the four men were able to make their way out of the highly secured prison, but Iraq’s minister of justice, Dara Nurredin Dara, said Friday that the jail’s American-assigned warden, Omar Hamis Hamadi, was missing as well. “We were told that he was trustworthy and had a good reputation,” Mr. Dara said.

Like nobody saw this coming , How can you Expect to have Al Qaida members or Wannabe's , guarding Al Qaida Members ?

Guaranteed there will be more of this .

Consider it another reason to just put a bullet through their heads out in the Field !


The New York Times
BAGHDAD — Several high-ranking members of Iraq’s most violent insurgent group were among a group that broke out of a maximum security prison this week, Iraqi security officials said Friday.

The escape, which Iraq did not make public for 48 hours, came just five days after the American military handed the prison over to the Iraqi government.

The men, members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, escaped from the Camp Cropper prison complex just outside Baghdad on Tuesday, five days after it was transferred to Iraqi control as part of American preparations to withdraw. The missing men include the group’s minister of finance, its minister of the interior and its minister of justice, the security officials said, without naming them. The standing of a fourth escapee was unclear.

Iraqi officials announced Thursday that four men who had been captured by American forces and held for about 15 months had escaped two days earlier, without specifying their importance.

On Friday, the United States military in Iraq declined to answer questions on the escape.

It remains unknown how the four men were able to make their way out of the highly secured prison, but Iraq’s minister of justice, Dara Nurredin Dara, said Friday that the jail’s American-assigned warden, Omar Hamis Hamadi, was missing as well. “We were told that he was trustworthy and had a good reputation,” Mr. Dara said.

Other Iraqi security officials said that several guards had failed to report to work since the escape.

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Reporters Escape Taliban Captors

New York Times, Afghan Journalists Were Held 7 Months
Some very lucky men ! Escaping while the Taliban are being hunted down like dogs ,is extremely lucky , First of all being an American seems to be cause enough for the Taliban to execute you ! and then working on a book about the U.S involvement in Afghanistan ? I would not think they would Take to kindly to that either !

washington post
NEW YORK, June 20 -- A New York Times reporter kidnapped by the Taliban and held for seven months in the rugged mountainous region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border escaped Friday, along with a local Afghan reporter, by climbing over a wall and finding a nearby Pakistani army base, according to the newspaper, U.S. officials and the journalist's family.
David Rohde, 41, was taken captive Nov. 10 along with local reporter Tahir Ludin, 35, and their driver while Rohde was researching a book on Afghanistan. News organizations, including The Washington Post, did not report on the abduction at the request of the Times and Rohde's relatives, who feared that publication of the news could endanger the lives of the captives.

Rohde was kidnapped after he, Ludin and their driver, Assadullah Mangal, 24, set out by car for a prearranged interview with a local Taliban commander. Rohde, described by friends and colleagues as a brave but cautious reporter who always measured risks before traveling, told colleagues at the Times' Kabul bureau that he expected to be fine. But as a precaution, he left instructions on whom to call if he did not return.

The reporter, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, was beginning work on a book about the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. He had been held captive in 1995 in Bosnian Serb territory while reporting for the Christian Science Monitor on mass killings at the height of the Bosnian war.

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