This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Since May 2003, at least 24 Americans have been kidnapped in Iraq.
Eighteen are dead or missing.
DEAD OR PRESUMED DEAD: -Nicholas Berg, 26, a telecommunications business owner from West Chester, Pa. Not long after being briefly detained by Iraqi police near Mosul, Berg went missing on April 9, 2004. His body was found May 10, 2004. The next day, a video surfaced showing the American being decapitated.
-Staff Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, 20, an Army reservist from Batavia, Ohio. Officially listed by the military as missing in action, Maupin has been promoted three times since his kidnapping on April 9, 2004, when his 26-vehicle convoy was ambushed outside Baghdad International Airport. Later that month, he was shown in a video sent to the U.S. Embassy in Qatar. In June 2004, Al-Jazeera television reported receiving a videotape showing Maupin standing before an open grave, and then being shot in the back of his head at point-blank range.
-William Bradley, 50, a civilian truck driver from Chesterfield, N.Y., was working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Baghdad. He was in the same fuel convoy as Maupin. His body was found, buried near the attack sight, in January 2005.
-Eugene Armstrong, 52, a construction contractor from Hillsdale, Mich., who was taken during a raid in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood where he lived with other employees of Gulf Energy Company, a giant construction firm based in the United Arab Emirates. A videotape, made shortly after his Sept. 16, 2004, kidnapping, was broadcast on the Internet. It showed him being decapitated.
-Jack Hensley, 48, of Marietta, Ga., kidnapped with Armstrong.
Hensley's headless body was found in Baghdad on September 23, 2004.
His beheading was also shown on tape.
-Ronald Schulz, 40, an electrical engineer from North Dakota, kidnapped on Dec. 6, 2005. A video was released showing him as a captive, and a demand was made for the release of all Iraqis being held by coalition troops. On Dec. 19, 2005, another video was released, this one showed a kneeling, blindfolded man identified as Schulz being shot in the back of the head. The lifeless body falls in the dirt.
-Tom Fox, 54, a Quaker from Clear Brook, Va., hauled out of a car on Nov. 26, 2005 in Western Baghdad with three other members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an anti-war organization based in Chicago. Over the next seven months, four videos were released, showing the prisoners - Fox, two Canadians and one Briton. In June 2006, Fox's body was found atop a garbage dump in Baghdad. He had been shot in the head and chest. Within days, the remaining three hostages were released.
-Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, from Houston, captured on June 16, 2006, when his unit came under small-arms fire while manning a checkpoint at Youssifiyah, south of Baghdad in the Triangle of Death.
His mutilated body was found three days later. Three months later, a video posted by an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida showed two bodies, one believed to be Menchaca's, the other believed to be that of fellow hostage Pfc. Lowell Tucker, being dragged behind a truck and set afire. The video claimed the killings were in retaliation for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by members of the same military unit, the 101st Airborne Division.
-Army Pfc. Thomas Lowell Tucker, 25, from Madras, Ore. Kidnapped with Menchaca, his body was found with his Menchaca's, on a street near a power plant, on June 19. The site had been booby-trapped.
MISSING -Kirk von Ackermann, 37, of Moss Beach, Calif., vanished Oct. 9, 2003. He was driving alone between Tikrit and Kirkuk. His car was found abandoned.
-Timothy Bell, 44, of Mobile, Ala., disappeared with Maupin and Bradley after fuel convoy attack.
-Aban Elias, 41, an Iraqi-American civil engineer from Denver, Colo., was kidnapped near Fallujah, and then shown on videotape May 3, 2004, pleading for his life. He has not been heard from since.
-Sadeq Mohammed Sadeq, a Lebanese-American who formerly worked for Virginia-based contractor SkyLink USA, kidnapped by gunmen from his home in Baghdad on Nov. 2, 2004. He was shown in a video later that month. He has not been heard from since.
-Jeffrey Ake, 47, of LaPorte, Ind., kidnapped April 11, 2005, while working at a water treatment plant in the Baghdad area. Two days later, a video was released. On it, Ake pleaded with the U.S.
government to save his life. He has not been heard from since.
-Jonathon Cote, 23, a native of Getzville, N.Y., and Paul Reuben, 39, a former police officer from a suburb of Minneapolis, kidnapped with two other unidentified Americans on Nov. 16, 2006. Also kidnapped was an unidentified Austrian. All were civilian guards employed by Crescent Security Group Inc., based in Kuwait, and were abducted from a 42-vehicle convoy that had just crossed into southern Iraq from Kuwait. A videotaped message from an insurgent group claiming to have the five men demanded the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq. The kidnapped men were not shown.