Iranian envoy kidnapped in Iraq

An Iranian diplomat was abducted on Sunday evening when his convoy was stopped by men with official Defence Ministry identification in the Karrada neighbourhood in Baghdad...

An Iranian diplomat was abducted on Sunday evening when his convoy was stopped by men with official Defence Ministry identification in the Karrada neighbourhood in Baghdad, senior Iraqi and American officials said on Monday.

Iraqi security forces captured several suspects after pursuing their vehicles through the streets of Baghdad, two of the Iraqi officials said. The vehicle with the diplomat was not caught, though.

The abduction of the Iranian took place in a largely Shi’ite section of the city not far from where a truck bomb killed at least 135 people on Saturday and where residents have complained that the slow pace of the increase in American troops has left them open to attacks.

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The men captured in the chase by Iraqi forces on Sunday were Iraqis with Defence Ministry identification, Iraqi and American officials said, raising serious questions about whether government forces themselves were involved in the abduction.

A senior Iraqi official said that the credentials initially appeared to be genuine but that investigators later received conflicting information about whether the men had been dismissed from the ministry but somehow kept their identification.

When asked about indications that an Iranian diplomat had been abducted in Baghdad, Mohammad alHosseini, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran, said: “We need to investigate, because we have been receiving a lot of news like that these days. I cannot confirm it yet.”

If the kidnappers’ credentials turn out to be genuine, there will be enormous pressure on the Iraqi government to recover the diplomat and capture all of those involved. The Iraqi government has been critical of recent raids by American forces in which Iranians working with diplomatic offices in Iraq have been detained.

–JAMES GLANZ