About a week later, a family member received a ransom demand and was shown a grainy video on a hand-held device of a man whom extremists claimed was al-Taie.
Al-Taie was last seen four months after his abduction in a video posted on the Internet by a Shiite militant faction called the Ahl al-Bayt Brigades, which is linked to Asaib Ahl al-Haq.