- On Friday morning, I sat in a Baghdad home with a poor
old man and his daughter who were mourning their son and brother, who was
killed by American soldiers.
-
- Now, you may ask why I do not write about Fallujah and
the atrocities which occurred there three days ago: the cruel and atrocious
murder of four Americans who were dragged from their sports utility vehicles,
burned, mutilated, dragged through the streets of that dangerous city and
then hanged naked from a decaying British railway bridge over the Euphrates
river. The answer is simple. US proconsul Paul Bremer called their deaths
"barbaric and inexcusable". Paul Bremer was right. But their
deaths were not inexplicable.
-
- The old man was Abdul-Aziz al-Amairi - his daughter's
name is Sundus - and their son and brother was a journalist, a news cameraman
whose brains I saw lying on the back seat of the car in which he, Ali Abdul
Aziz, and his reporter colleague, Ali al-Khatib, were shot dead by US troops
just over two weeks ago. Because I almost lost my own life on the Afghan
border in December of 2001, I take a special interest in such people -
and their fate.
-
- So here are a few facts. Two Thursdays ago, a rocket
smashed into a hotel in southern Baghdad. The spanking new Arab news channel,
Arabia, sent its crew to cover the story. The two Alis arrived with their
driver, Abu Mariam, parked their car 250m from the scene and went up to
speak to the US troops guarding the road. They were told they could film,
but could do no "stand-uppers" - face-to-camera shots in front
of the building. They completed their report, returned to their South Korean-made
KIA car and prepared to leave.
-
- But as they did so, a 67-year-old man, Tariq Abdul-Ghani,
drove his Volvo car down the road towards the US checkpoint, unaware that
anything was amiss. He drove into a hail of American gunfire.
-
- His family - to whom I also spoke at great length - say
that he received 36 bullets to his body. The Volvo crashed into one of
the US vehicles. Abdul-Ghani's widow and son, who are Swedish citizens,
say that he could not have seen the US checkpoint.
-
- The two reporters and their driver, Mariam, were 120m
from the scene. I have paced out the distance with Mariam and Arabia's
lawyer, Ahmad al-Abadi. Ali al-Khatib al-Hashimi, the reporter, told Mariam
not to follow the Volvo, but to turn and drive away in the opposite direction.
-
- Mariam obeyed the instruction. "We crossed the median
and began to drive away down the opposite side of the road away from the
Americans," he says. "We had gone quite a way when bullets hit
our KIA car.
-
- "The bullets came through the back window. The cameraman
was hit in the head, then Al-Khatib, the reporter, suddenly lay his head
on my shoulder and said, 'Abu Mariam'. I made a right turn.
-
- "Our Arabia colleagues called me on the phone and
said 'What is happening?' I said 'I've got to find a hospital - I don't
know where the nearest hospital is'. I took them to the Ibn al-Nafis hospital.
Al-Amairi was dead on arrival. The other Ali died the next day."
-
- Three more civilians had died in "liberated"
Iraq. The Arabia channel responded with fury. They demanded an inquiry
from the Americans and they decorated their head office in Baghdad with
mourning posters.
-
- At first the Americans announced that they could not
have killed the reporter and cameraman. Both were killed with single shots
to the head. How was it possible for US troops so far away to have been
so accurate in killing two men with single shots to the head? Good point.
-
- So, with the son of the Volvo driver, Al-Hashimi, I visited
the police station where he wished to register his father's death. The
Iraqi police major at the Mesbah police station was sympathetic and showed
the case documents to the Volvo driver's son, and to me.
-
- These included a paper that said a Captain Robert Scheetz
of the US 1st Armoured Division had arranged the transfer of the father's
remains to the family. The son asked for the car and its contents. You
must ask the Americans for them, he was told.
-
- "I went to the US base at the presidential palace,"
he told me. "They said I could not have the car back. I asked for
my father's wallet and his money and his wristwatch and ring. The soldier
was on the phone and he said to me, 'You must forget the car - why do you
want it?' I said I wanted to put it in my garden because this would be
a symbol of my father's death. He was kind. He lowered his head and shook
my hand and said how sorry he was. Then he said that we could not have
back his wallet and wrist-watch and ring. Why not?"
-
- Even more disturbing were the words of the major in the
Mesbah police station. He told me that, shortly after the incident, US
troops had come to the police station and had smashed the back window of
the Volvo so that no traces remained of the bullet holes. He said they
ripped open the spare tyre of the vehicle - which partly obscured the rear
window - with knives "to see if there were any explosives in it".
The rear window was, indeed, totally smashed. Horrifically, the brains
of Ali al-Amairi still lay, fly-covered, on the back seat. But I climbed
into the vehicle and counted nine rounds through the vehicle - through
the back seats and the front window.
-
- A few days later, the Americans came up with a new version
of the killing. The Volvo had approached the checkpoint at speed, the soldiers
thought they were under attack, fired at the vehicle and some of their
bullets must have hit the Arabia car as it sped away in the opposite direction.
The US troops did not know they had hit the journalists. The Americans
admitted responsibility, but it was not deliberate.
-
- Hmmm. But there's a problem. The journalists crossed
the median because the Volvo was a target. They didn't turn before the
gunfire. So how could they have been hit by the same rounds that killed
67-year-old Tariq Abdul-Ghani, when he was dead before they decided to
leave? And why did American troops smash the back window of the Arabia
car hours later, when the bullet holes would have proved how many rounds
had been fired at the car? I used a pencil to mark nine rounds hitting
the car.
-
- Back to the family living room. Old Abdul-Aziz was weeping
and his daughter - Ali the cameraman's sister, Sundus - was crying too.
"The Americans came to liberate us - and they killed our Ali. The
last time we saw him he said that he was fine, but then he came back from
the gate and asked his father to embrace him and he kissed our father three
times. He called us a few minutes before he went out on his last story.
He said he would be 'OK'."
-
- Three more families - good, decent, Iraqi people - now
rage at the US occupation.
-
- "I have only one brother and the Americans took
him from us - from where can I get another brother?" she wept.
-
- Al-Amairi was married with no children. His reporter
colleague had been married only four months. His wife was pregnant. The
Volvo driver, Abdul-Ghani, leaves a widow and a son and three daughters.
-
- No, I don't think this excuses the barbarities in Fallujah.
But I do understand that insatiable anger that these Iraqi relatives feel.
The Americans, after all, killed three Western journalists on April 9 last
year, and a cameraman outside the Abu Ghoreib prison a few months later
and then an ABC cameraman in Fallujah last week. And the two Alis last
month.
-
- "We regret the accidental shooting of the Arabia
employees," the US military said this week. And that's that. What
more can I say? Maybe, as I wrote after other innocent deaths in Bosnia
12 years ago, I should end my reports with the words: Watch Out! - The
Independent
-
- Copyright: The Independent. UK.
|