Shafaq News– BaghdadSecurity forces freed an Iraqi citizen abducted inIran through an external intelligence operation carried out in coordinationwith Iranian authorities, Iraq’s National Intelligence Service announced on Thursday.In a statement, the agency confirmed the rescue ofHussein Taha Yassin, who had been held by a criminal gang seeking to extort hisfamily. Investigators, it noted, located the detention site and arrestedseveral suspects linked to the kidnapping.The operation follows a recent rise in abductions ofIraqi travelers in Iran, particularly from Basra, with criminal networksdemanding large ransoms and issuing death threats. In one case, an Iraqivisitor to the Imam Reza Shrine, the eighth Imam in Shiite Islam and a majorpilgrimage site, in Mashhad, northeast Iran, was kidnapped while touringnorthern Iran, after which captors demanded $20,000. In another incident, thefamily of an Iraqi man identified as Hassan appealed for urgent interventionafter he was abducted, in exchange for a $40,000 ransom, while retrieving apersonal item in Iran.