For Missing Guards' Kin, An Agonizing Conclusion

The gathering here had been planned months ago to allow the families to meet and compare notes. The relatives met in a conference room for about four hours Saturday to hear a presentation by a Minneapolis man who claimed to possess information showing that investigators had missed several opportunities to secure the hostages' release.

The five guards were abducted at a fake security checkpoint near Basra by at least three dozen heavily armed men wearing Iraqi police uniforms, business suits and masks, according to two Crescent guards who were left bound inside a truck.

The five guards were last seen when a video filmed by their captors and date-stamped Dec. 21 and Dec. 22, 2006, was aired Jan. 3 last year. At the time, the men appeared to be in good health.

Two months later, the U.S. military barred Crescent personnel from all U.S. bases after the company was found in possession of illegal offensive weapons, including rocket launchers and grenades.

The Pentagon has estimated that at least 20,000 hired guns work in Iraq for more than 100 companies, although some estimates are much higher.

Some relatives said they believed U.S. authorities never took the investigation seriously and failed to follow up several leads, possibly because the guards were not directly employed by the government. Mark Munns, whose son Joshua, a 25-year-old former Marine, was pronounced dead Wednesday, said he and the families had not decided what action to pursue. "I'm going to wait and see," he said. "Right now I'm so pissed off that [the government] let our kids hang out to dry like this."

Kolko, the FBI spokesman, wrote, "As with every case where Americans are kidnapped, whether in the US or overseas, the FBI fully investigates these matters in order to identify, apprehend and bring to justice those responsible."

Since the men were abducted, the families have each received one $3,500 payment from Crescent. The guards' monthly salary was $7,000; Young, as team leader, made $8,000. Munns said that Crescent "owes our kids over $130,000 in back pay, and I'll be goddamned if they ain't gonna pay it. We're gonna get it out of them."

Paul Chapman, Crescent's media liaison, said in a telephone interview from Kuwait City that the company had insured the guards through Lloyd's of London. Their beneficiaries, he said, will receive $300,000, although it was unclear whether the payments will be made to the company or directly to the families, he added.

After the video appeared, nothing was heard from the hostages or their captors for more than a year. According to relatives, the captors never demanded ransom. Every Monday, the State Department held a conference call to update the families, but Munns said the calls contained so little information that sometimes he would "set down the phone, walk away and come back 10 minutes later."

Then, in mid-February, the FBI informed the families that U.S. authorities had obtained DNA and fingerprint evidence. The agency did not describe what the evidence was. "They never said that it was cigarettes or bottled water," DeBrabander said. "We all assumed it was something like that."

On March 12, the source was revealed as parts of five severed fingers that had been delivered to U.S. authorities in Baghdad. The grisly package contained no further information. Two of the fingers were so badly decomposed that identification required additional analysis. But the development was seen by relatives as potentially positive because U.S. authorities said they were unable to determine whether the men were alive or dead when their fingers were removed.