A Baghdad Amadou Diallo

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Boy's Killing Angers Iraqis
Shooting Seen as a Crime

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 29, 2003; Page A21

BAGHDAD -- Around 10 p.m. Thursday, Mohammed Kubaisi, 12, was fatally shot
in the chest on the roof of his home in Baghdad by a U.S. soldier.

Those are the only facts on which the Kubaisi family and the U.S. military
agree.

For the family, it was a wanton killing, the slaying by a trigger-happy
soldier of a curious, unarmed boy who was watching troops search for
weapons in his neighborhood.

"This is a crime," said Wafaa Kubaisi, Mohammed's mother. "Why would an
American with all his technology kill a child?"

According to the U.S. military, what the soldier saw was a figure in the
darkness carrying an AK-47 automatic rifle and moving across the roof of
the house, with exposed U.S. soldiers below. The U.S. forces recovered the
weapon when they searched the house after the shooting, according to Maj.
Sean Gibson, a military spokesman.

A military investigation is underway, but the results are already moot for
many residents of Baghdad. In their mind, the killing was gratuitous. Even
some Iraqis who initially welcomed the U.S. occupation see the boy's death
as another grievance against U.S. forces.

"I thought the Americans would bring prosperity, but they are punishing
us," Mohammed's uncle, Kamel, said to the nodding approval of mourners at
the home of the dead boy's grandfather on Saturday evening.

The men sat on the lawn, smoking and speaking quietly. The women, inside
the house, periodically burst into tears, their cries rising from behind
closed doors.

"The bullet that shot Mohammed will be worth a million bullets," said
Mohammed's mother, in a veiled threat of revenge, after she emerged from
the home, staggering and supported by family members.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45903-2003Jun28.html


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org