What surge?
Two Contractors Abducted in Iraq Are Found Dead
By DAVID STOUT
Published: March 25, 2008
WASHINGTON — The bodies of two American contractors kidnapped in Iraq more than a year ago have been found, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Monday, days after the severed finger of one of them was sent to American military authorities.
The F.B.I. said that the remains of Ronald J. Withrow of Roaring Springs, Tex., and John Roy Young of Kansas City, Mo., had been found, and that relatives of the victims had been notified. The bureau did not say when and where the bodies were found, or anything about their condition.
Mr. Withrow was one of five kidnapping victims — Mr. Young not among them — whose fingers were sent recently to the military in Iraq. DNA analysis confirmed that the fingers were from the missing men.
Mr. Withrow was working in Iraq for the information technology company JPI Worldwide when he disappeared Jan. 5, 2007. Mr. Young worked for the Crescent Security Group under contract to Italy. He was seized in an ambush on Nov. 16, 2006.
The men still missing, who were seized with Mr. Young and whose fingers were also sent to military officials, are Paul Reuben of Minneapolis; Jonathon Cote of Getzville, N.Y., near Buffalo; Joshua Munns of Redding, Calif.; and Bert Nussbaumer of Vienna, Austria.
Mr. Withrow’s mother, Barbara Alexander of Afton, Tex., told The Associated Press that the F.B.I. told her of her son’s death on Sunday night. “We’re bringing him home,” she was quoted as saying. “That was what our main concern was. And that they’re not going to hurt him anymore.”
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