Militias Wresting Control Across Iraq's North and South

"The neighbors just watched," Muther said. "What could they do? It was the police.

"Muther searched for five hours for his abducted father in Basra's streets. As the sun began to set, he gave up and returned home. Minutes later, a friend rushed into his house, crying. He had heard that Muther's father had been killed.

That evening, the father's corpse was found in The Lot, amid rusted cans and water bottles. He had been shot five times -- twice in the chest, twice in the face and once in the temple.

"They carried out their own justice," Muther said, his eyes welling up.

A Maze of Prisons

Widespread abductions have instilled fear across northern Iraq and led families on a desperate search for relatives who disappear into a maze of prisons in Kurdistan, the semiautonomous region controlled by the two Kurdish parties. Reports of the missing stretch across an arc that spans the Syrian, Turkish and Iranian borders.

Hussein Saad Hussein, 60, said he began looking for his son Amar in December after the 33-year-old Mosul hotel worker was picked up in a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid, along with three other men, including Hussein's nephew and son-in-law. Hussein said he heard nothing for weeks until some released detainees told him that Amar had been spotted at a prison in the Kurdish-held city of Dahuk. He sent his daughter, Sukaina, to the prison, but "they denied he was there," Hussein said.

In March, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the prisons, forwarded letters from Hussein's nephew and son-in-law. The letters were dated March 15 and arrived from a detention facility not in Dahuk but in Irbil, a city dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party. "God knows and you know," wrote Hussein's nephew. Censors had deleted his next words.

"Note: I wrote this letter in the presence of Amar," the nephew wrote. "He is with me in the same room.

"Hussein sent Sukaina to Irbil to look for Amar. "She showed them the letters," Hussein said. "They said, 'No, we don't have those people here.'

"Weeks later, Hussein heard from released detainees that Amar and the others had been transferred to yet another prison in the resort city of Shaklawa, 20 miles northeast of Irbil. Sukeina found her brother there. "The conditions in Shaklawa are better than Irbil," Hussein said matter-of-factly. "He can extend his legs when he sleeps.

"The Kurds are holding detainees at prisons in Irbil, Sulaymaniyah, Dahuk, Akrah and Shaklawa, according to human rights activists, political leaders and released detainees.