Father hopes to find son held hostage in Iraq

Photo by Paul Robeson

MISSING SON: Mark Munns holds a picture of his son Josh who was kidnapped last year in Iraq.

Josh Munns

“When our son comes home there is going to be one gigantic party,” said Mark Munns, the father of a former Anderson marine being held hostage in Iraq.

The Munns family is trying to find Josh and free him. They are keeping an upbeat attitude even though the news, if any, is extremely sporadic.

“I know Josh is one step ahead of his captors and is working on a way to get himself out,” said Munns.

“I know my boy. He will not give up or give in.”

Josh Munns, 24, was working as a contractor when he was kidnapped in November 2006 in Iraq in the district of Basra.

A month after he vanished, Munns and four other contractors appeared in a video saying they had been kidnapped by a Shiite Muslim militant group.

Almost a year has passed since anyone last heard from Munns when he and the others were taken hostage in Iraq. He was last seen in a video clip broadcast seen around the world last December. The families of the men have not given up hope for them.

As a contractor for the Crescent Security Group, based in Kuwait, the younger Munns, along with his co-workers, were kidnapped Nov. 16, 2006, when suspected militiamen in Iraqi police uniforms ambushed a convoy of trucks. The trucks were being escorted by the security company on a highway near the southern border city of Safwan.

The other men taken hostage were John R. Young from Kansas City, Mo., Jon Cote from Buffalo, N.Y., Paul Johnson Reuben of Buffalo, Minn., and Bert Nussbaumer, an Austrian citizen.

The kidnappers were not seen or heard in the video, only the hostages. The video lasted a minute and 40 seconds and was digitally stamped with the dates Dec. 21 and Dec. 22, 2006. It is not clear whether the kidnappers were holding the contractors for political pressure on American-led occupation forces or they were looking for a ransom.

According to Josh’s father, Mark, Josh had joined the Marine Corps in 2001 right after graduation from Anderson Union High School (AUHS).

“Graduation was on June 9 and he was gone on the 11th,” said Mark Munns.

Munns said his son and Caleb Stefonovich, his good friend from AUHS, went into the Marine Corps together.

After serving two tours of duty in the Middle East, Josh was discharged in 2005 and went to work building swimming pools – “a job which did not have the excitement he was used to,” his father said.

Josh thought about re-enlisting and even about entering the police academy in Reno, Nev., but, in July 2006, he got a job and started working for Crescent Security based in Kuwait. Some Crescent Security members act as armed security guards for truck convoys carrying supplies — which is what Josh was doing when they were ambushed.

Josh did make it back to Anderson for his friend’s wedding in October of last year. He told his father at that time that the company he worked for did not have the “command quality” that he was used to in the Marine Corps. He told his dad that he was going back to “finish his tour and then bring his gear home.” That was the last time Mark and Josh’s stepmother, Christa, saw him — a month later he was kidnapped.

Mark said that he has had visits from the State Department and the FBI who are trying to work behind the scenes to find and free Josh and the other four men.

“I know he is alive and he will be back,” said Munns.