Victim's Tale of Clockwork Death and Ransom

Baghdad, Iraq, May 4 - New victims arrived every day, blindfolded and terrified. The kidnappers would shove them into the small, unfurnished room where Issam Mofak Jassem sat on the concrete floor awaiting his fate.

The fresh captives would be pulled from the room, sometimes within hours, and Mr. Jassem would hear them being led down the hall. Gunshots would follow quickly, and he would never see the men again.

This was the pattern for three days, until, Mr. Jassem said he was ordered to join three men hauled in the previous night.

Gunmen blindfolded and marched them down the hall, then made them kneel in a row. The first gunshot was deafening, and Mr. Jassem heard a man's body slump to the floor. One more to go, he thought, and it would be his turn. He worried for his three young daughters, wife and mother, and he prepared to die.

He was spared, he said, when his captors realized at the last moment that they had confused him with someone else, but the threat of death haunted his entire ordeal.