Baghdad, Iraq ? A senior U.S. military spokesman said Thursday that an Iraqi American soldier kidnapped 10 days ago in Baghdad was believed to be alive and in the hands of his original captors.

Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell identified the soldier as 41-year-old reservist Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie and said al-Taayie was visiting his in-laws and his wife on Oct. 23, the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, when he was abducted by three carloads of armed men. Since then, the military has conducted intensive searches for the soldier, who moved to the United States as a teenager and returned to Iraq in November 2005, as a translator in the U.S. Army Reserve Caldwell said.

Members of al-Taayie’s family said in interviews this week that they had warned him they were being watched and to be careful on his visits.

They said his wife, Israa Abdul-Satar, 26, a local science student whom al-Taayie married in February 2005, and two of her siblings had tried to fight off the abductors when they came to grab him.