An employee of the State Electricity Department, Yasser was at home in the Al Ruba'i neighbourhood of Mahmoudiyah in Baghdad, when agents of the military forces surrounded his street and an officer, a group of four masked soldiers and an informant violently broke the door to arrest him and pointed Kalashnikovs at the victim's sisters threatening them with reprisals if they used their mobile phones or tried to contact anyone. Asked why they were arresting him, the officer only answered that they had "some inquiries",but did not show any arrest warrant.

The neighbours and the victim's family believe the perpetrators belonged to the governmental military forces due to their military uniforms and the Hummer military cars they were driving. On the same day, more than 20 people were arrested in the same neighbourhood.

Following Yasser's disappearance, his family consulted the Ministry of Human Rights, as well as the Ministry of Justice and the Al Sa'a Court to enquire about their son's fate and whereabouts. However, none of these institutions held a record on him in their databases.

Eight years prior to this incident, Yasser's father,AbdelKarim Aswad Khodair Salman Al Janabi, a 57-year-old Regional Manager of the same State Electricity Department also went missing. As he was driving to work at around 8am on 20 December 2006, Abdelkarim was stopped by a group of men dressed in civilian clothes but driving cars of theFederal Police – a paramilitary organisation designed to bridge the gap between the police and the army– who arrested him near the firefighter's department in the neighbourhood of Al-Ruba'i.

The family suspects the main reason behind Abdelkarim's arrest to be the government's intention to replace him in his position as regional manager for the State Electricity Department. Both Yasser and Abdelkarim remain disappeared to date and their family fear that they could be tortured while being secretly detained.

In view of their disappearance, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly sent communications to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearance (CED) and the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to call upon the Iraqi authorities to release them immediately, or at the very least to investigate their cases and disclose their whereabouts and allow their family to visit them without restriction.

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