FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Jan. 20, 2008

The entire Iraqi Olympic tae kwon do team of 11 athletes, sent to Cyprus to train, asked the Cypriot government for political asylum, claiming physical danger to their lives if they were forced to return to Iraq.

They were training in the northern Turkish Cypriot city of Kyrenia when they returned in a group to their hotel, changed into their street clothes and left with smugglers to whom they had paid $5,000 per head to smuggle them across the frontier separating the divided island to the Greek side, where they asked for asylum.  "We left behind all our clothes and equipment.  Our coach was really mad.  He threatened to call the police."

One athlete, who identified himself only as Mustafa displayed a scar on his scalp which he claims to have to have received when Sh'iite militiamen kidnapped him and his father from the Adhamiya neighborhood of  Baghdad and shot them.  His father died and he spent 38 days in a coma.  Alaa, 30 years of age was almost burned alive when his car was ambushed at a militia check-point near Bacuba.  Saleh, 17 years old, was twice kidnapped from his house.  His father was killed.  "Martial arts has taught me to defend myself, but not against a Kalashnikov machine gun," he said darkly.

Ahmed lived with his wife, who is also a team member, in Haditha.  "We were trapped between the Sh'iite militias, the American troops, the car bombs and the al-Qaeda terrorists.  We have a three month-old baby.  We had to get her out of that madness."  The baby who was ill when she arrived in Cyprus with her parents, had to pass her first days in a Larnaka hospital.  Nevertheless, Ahmed is happy.  "She will grow up to be a great athlete," he enthused.

All the athletes come from the Sunni ethnic group.  "The Sh'iite athletes train in Iran," explained Moustafa.  "Sunni athletes go either to Turkey or Jordan.  It's impossible to train seriously in a war zone."

These athletes were only recruited to the national team after the original team, 13 members, were found murdered in July, 2007, one year after having been kidnapped en masse.  The team president, Ahmed Abdel Ghafur, was kidnapped in Baghdad by two men wearing police uniforms and has never again been seen.  After that the International Olympic Committee pledged to arrange for Iraqi athletes to train outside the country, but after an acrimonious debate on the ship that took them to Cyprus, the athletes decided that no amount of official protection could guarantee their safety, and they voted to defect as a group.

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