Iraq Olympics Leaders Still Missing After 1 Year

Iraq NOC President Ahmad Al Samarrai and Secretary General Ammar Jabbar at Olympics meetings in Seoul three months before their kidnapping in 2006. (ATR)(ATR) One year since leaders of the National Olympic Committee of Iraq were seized at gunpoint with dozens of colleagues, their whereabouts remain a mystery. IOC President Jacques Rogge tells Around the Rings he is “very uncomfortable” with the specter of violence hanging over the NOC.

“We are very concerned about the 23 sports leaders that still are missing,” says Rogge in an interview with ATR in Rio de Janeiro where he is attending the Pan American Games.

“We have insisted that at every level, we’ve insisted at the level of the Prime Minister, the national government, the minister of sport, many times. They say they have no clue, they say they can’t help us,” said the IOC leader.

“We are very concerned. Today the practice of sport is almost non-existent in Iraq,” says Rogge. He notes that at least 300 Iraqis are now involved with training programs abroad made possible by the IOC and a number of national Olympic committees including Jordan, the U.S., Britain and the Olympic Council of Asia.

NOC President Ahmad Al Samarrai and Secretary General Ammar Jabbar Al Sammarrai speaks following his election as NOCI President in 2004. (ATR) were among the dozens taken hostage during a July 15, 2006, meeting of the NOC in Baghdad. Some were released in the days that followed, but not most of the group.

The two NOC leaders had been elected in January 2004 as part of a new National Olympic Committee of Iraq, replacing the former committee that had been suspended by the IOC. That NOC had been led by the late Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein, notorious for torturing athletes who failed to please him.

It is believed that Al Sammarai, a Sunni, was the target of score-settling by Shiite militia.

Sports officials and athletes have become regular targets of the sectarian violence in Iraq. Acting leadership of the Iraq NOC: president Mustapha Bashar (seated) and secretary general Hussain Al Ameedy. (ATR)Last month, the remains of more than a dozen members of the Iraqi national taekwondo team were discovered in western Iraq, more than a year after they went missing while driving to Jordan for a training camp.

Now taking Al Sammarai’s place as acting president is Mustapha Bashar, a Kurd considered “safe” from being drawn into the Sunni-Shiite battles.

The acting secretary general is Hussain Al Ameedy.

One IOC member from the Middle East who is familiar with the Iraq situation says he was told “to stop asking about Al Sammarai” by an official in Iraq a few months ago.

Rogge expressed frustration over the lack of news, despite “multiplying the pleas for liberation or at least discussion, if any would be possible.”

“It’s like talking to wall. There’s nothing coming back,” says Rogge.