Nineteen-year-old Mehdi was looking forward to meeting the girl who had been calling for days on his cellphone. But he was about to learn that the blind date was a lure by kidnappers, who have turned abductions into a multi-million dollar business in Iraq.
When he arrived for his rendezvous, Mehdi was forced at gunpoint into a car, then held bound and blindfolded for two weeks until his father paid the $60,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers.
Since Mehdi was snatched around Christmas of 2009, the number of kidnappings for ransom has multiplied, turning into a seemingly flourishing business for both criminal gangs and insurgent groups.
In the lawless aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, abductions became rampant, especially during the exceptionally bloody Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict that peaked between 2005 and 2007.
But those sectarian kidnappings were not usually about money.
“It is a far increasing percentage now where the objective is money, whereas then the objective was murder,” said Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, spokesman for US forces in Iraq.
Foreigners, and truly wealthy and important Iraqis, live behind blast walls and security guards, never stepping out without personal protection.
But Iraqi professionals and small businessmen who cannot afford bodyguards, and whom kidnappers can count on to cough up large sums for ransom, have become the favoured targets of kidnappers.
Between April and June this year, six to seven Iraqis were kidnapped each month, according to UK-based private security firm, AKE. The average ransom paid to kidnappers, it said, was $50,000.
“Kidnap remains a regular occurrence in the country, with many incidents going unreported,” AKE analyst John Drake said.
Iraqi authorities claim that insurgents are behind the kidnappings, demanding ransom to finance terrorist activities. But they also acknowledge that many of the abductions are simply criminal.
“There are gangs who roam government offices, car showrooms or other places to identify targets,” said a police official in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Most victims refuse to talk publicly about their ordeals, fearing retribution. But Mehdi and his father agreed to tell their story.
“When I got to the place we had agreed to meet, the girl on the phone kept changing the venue,” recalled Mehdi, now 21, about the day he was taken.
Finally, she told him to go down a side street. There, three 4X4 vehicles with tinted windows suddenly pulled up and forced him in at gunpoint.
They put a sack over his head and drove him around, finally stopping and dragging him into a house.
“There, I was blindfolded, my hands were bound with rope and my legs with chains,” he recalled.