Majid Kadom

It still surprises me that I stumble on news articles that, for whatever reason, managed to escape three years of previous search attempts. A link to the online version of this article eluded me for years.

My Saddam river hol
By Philip Cardy, The Sun, September 22, 2003

Business consultant Robert, of Notting Hill, West London, said: “I’d done a spot of waterskiing but only off Dorset. We went for lunch by the Tigris and realised it was beautiful for waterskiing. The boat guy had a pair of ancient waterskis nobody had used for years.”

Ryan, a US Army contractor said: “I know it was crazy but I thought, what the hell.”

Iraqi onlooker Majid Kadom, 41, said: “In Saddam’s day nobody ever waterskied along the Tigris. His guards would have shot at you. I was still worried somebody would start shooting.”

Related posts here at the Missing Man:

Waterskiing on the Tigris
Waterskiing on the Tigris Pt 2
Two Weeks in Baghdad by Robert Sinclair

Majid Kadom, briefly quoted in the article above, worked for Ryan Manelick. On the day he was killed, Kadom was reportedly at the hospital seeing to an injured relative. Because of his absence that day, Kadom would later figure in theories about what happened to both Ryan Manelick and Kirk von Ackermann.

Death of a Contractor
By Daniel Halpern, Rolling Stone, February 22, 2007

Dawkins proposed a series of theories. Maybe Charles Phillips and Ryan had invented the bribery allegations as part of the scheme to seize Ultra Services for themselves. Phillips "made bold threats to me stating that it is easy to frame someone and that Ryan had been trying to frame me for bribery and that his aim was to land me in jail," Dawkins wrote to Greg Manelick. Or maybe Ryan was skimming money from the company along with his Iraqi bodyguard, Majid Kadom, and Majid had killed Ryan to get the whole score for himself. Maybe Kirk von Ackermann had discovered Ryan's skimming and had been silenced by Ryan or Majid.

Colin Freeman interviewed Kadom for a piece published in the Scotsman in November of 2003, just 6 weeks before Ryan Manelick was killed.

Six months on, Iraq is a nation in a state of flux
By Colin Freeman, The Scotsman, November 1, 2003

For the first two months after the war, [Majid Kadom] lived off his wits, buying and selling whatever he could to keep money coming in for his wife and four children. Then he realised that with the influx of foreigners into the country, the fluent English he had learned during military training 20 years ago was probably his best asset.

After a brief spell working as a translator, he got a job as a $140 (£82.56)-a-week local manager for a US civilian contractor to the army, supplying gadgets such as shower units and caravans to army bases around Tikrit.

Mr Kadom now finds himself as the main breadwinner in his family, with his eight grown-up brothers now dependent on his new job to find them work as drivers, labourers and office assistants.

From the interview, it's a stretch to believe Kadom was involved. It just sounds like he had too much to lose