Abduction anniversary takes toll on families

[unhappycamper]

Abduction anniversary takes toll on families
By Patrick Condon - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Nov 17, 2007 15:09:52 EST

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. — Families of four American security guards working in Iraq had expected them home in time for last Thanksgiving. But a year after the men were abducted by suspected militiamen, the families are still waiting.

“We just need our father. We miss him so much,” Casey Reuben, 16-year-old daughter of Paul Reuben, said Saturday at a benefit breakfast in the Minneapolis suburb where he once worked as a police officer.

Families of some of the men held benefits or prayer services this weekend to mark the first anniversary of their disappearances, airing concerns that the U.S. government has stayed too quiet about efforts to free them — and considering alternate ways to secure their release.

“They don’t tell us anything,” said Sharon DeBrabander of Kansas City, Mo., mother of John Young. “I’ve been praying and praying, hoping something would have broke by now, but it just hasn’t.”

Reuben and Young — along with Jon Cote of Buffalo, N.Y.; Josh Munns of Redding, Calif.; and Bert Nussbaumer of Austria — worked in Iraq for Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based private security firm. They were kidnapped Nov. 16, 2006, by men in Iraqi police uniforms who ambushed a convoy they were escorting near the southern border city of Safwan.

The last indication that the men were alive came in January, in a video recording showing all five speaking briefly and saying they were being treated well. Since then, State Department officials have indicated they think the men are still alive, DeBrabander and other family members said.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_kidnappedcontractors_071117/