Iraq kidnap turns grisly

ANXIOUS DAD:
Mark Munns of Anderson is upset that federal officials are not keeping the family informed regarding the search for his kidnapped son, Joshua.

In October 2007, Mark Munns told the Anderson Valley Post that “the family is keeping an upbeat attitude even though the news, if any, is extremely sporadic.”

The sporadic news continues last week when Munn learned from a reporter, reading from an Austrian publication, that “five severed fingers” — one from each of five private security contractors kidnapped in Iraq during 2006, including Munns’ son Joshaua — had been received by U.S. military authorities in Bahgdad.

Mark Munns, the father of a former Anderson marine being held hostage, is still trying to find Joshua, who is now 25. Munns said “that no one from the State Department or FBI have confirmed it (the find) with him.”

The younger Munns has been working in the district of Basra, Iraq, as a contractor when he was kidnapped in November of 2006. A month after he had disappeared, Munns and the four other contractors appeared in a video released by a Shiite Muslim militant group claiming responsibility for the abductions.

For more than a year now, that December 2006 video was the last glimpse Mark Munns has had of his son, who was working for a Kuwait-based company, Crescent Security Group. According to news reports, the five privately-contracted employees were ambushed by a group of suspected militia wearing Iraqi police uniforms. The security contractors were accompanying a convoy of trucks into Iraq on a highway near the southern border city of Safwan.

The others taken hostage include 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.

Josh Munns 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, Munns was discharged in 2005, his father said.

Josh then took a job with 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 he was ambushed.

Josh was last in Anderson for a friend’s wedding in October 2006. 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 and he was going 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 Munns said in the interview “that he and the families of the other four hostages have grown exceedingly tired and unhappy with the lack of information they have received from government officials.”

“No information whatsoever is not right,” he said. “I’m not going to pull any more punches.”

Munns thinks that one of the fingers reportedly found probably belongs to his son, noting that FBI officials told him that they came across his son’s DNA in Iraq several weeks ago.

“The fingers, if that is in fact what they are, tell me that he’s still alive,” he said.