Posted on 07/01/2005 9:41:25 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
Iraq's U.N. ambassador accused U.S. Marines of killing his unarmed young cousin in what appeared to be "cold blood" and demanded an investigation and punishment for the perpetrators. In an e-mail to friends obtained Friday by The Associated Press, Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie said the killing took place in his ancestral village in western Anbar province, where U.S.-led forces have been conducting a counterinsurgency sweep aimed at disrupting the flow of foreign militants into Iraq.
His cousin Mohammed Al-Sumaidaie, 21, a university student, was killed June 25 when he took Marines doing house-to-house searches to a bedroom to show them where a rifle which had no live ammuntion was kept, the ambassador said. When the Marines left, he was found in the bedroom with a bullet in his neck.
Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. Mission, said acting U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson received a call from the Iraqi ambassador "and expressed her heartfelt condolences on this terrible situation, and contacted senior State Department and Pentagon officials to look into the matter immediately."
Sumaidaie said the killing represents "a betrayal" of the values and aspirations of Iraqis and Americans to defeat the terrorists and build a country based on freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights and the rule of law.
"It is a betrayal of the American people who are making huge sacrifices to bring this about, and a betrayal of Iraq and all Iraqi patriots who have put their trust in the United States," he said.
In the letter, Sumaidaie gave a detailed account of the tragedy.
Mohammed, an engineering student at the University of Techology in Baghdad, was visiting his family in the village of Al-Shaikh Hadid when the Marines knocked on the door, the ambassador said.
The young man rushed to open the door and greeted the group of about 10 Marines and an interpreter who appeared to be Egyptian pleasantly, "happy to exercise some of his English," he said.
The Marines asked if there were any weapons, and Mohammed said there was a rifle, which only had blanks, the letter said. He then led some of the Marines into his father's bedroom where it was kept, Sumaidaie wrote. His father, the local headmaster, was at school.
A short time later, his mother, brothers and sisters who were kept in the living room heard a thud but they were generally relaxed because they had nothing to hide, and "they thought, nothing to fear," he said.
But later a younger brother, Ali, was dragged by the hair into the corridor by a Marine and was beaten. The mother started sobbing. A Marine then went out and returned with a camera and went into the bedroom. After a while, the family went outside and waited on the porch as they were ordered, the ambassador said.
More than an hour later, as the soldiers were leaving, the interpreter asked the mother in Arabic if that was her son inside. When she replied "yes," the interpreter said, "they killed him!," Sumaidaie said.
"The mother let off a deafening cry of anguish, but the Marines were smiling at each other as they were leaving," he said. "In the bedroom, Mohammed was found dead and laying in a clotted pool of his blood. A single bullet had penetrated his neck," the ambassador said.
The ambassador wrote that he believed "a serious crime has been commited - a crime that may be repeated up and down Al-Anbar" and demanded an investigation into what he said appeared to be the "killing of an unarmed innocent civilian - a cold blood murder."
The Ass. Press now finds their news in emails? I think I'll start forwarding all the garbage I get to them.
Actually, if it can validate the source, it is a good source.
We need to find out what happened here and why.
This sort of post is meaningless without an account from both sides.
Until that is forthcoming, the whole story is hearsay at best and planted BS at worst.
I remember clearly the story from a week or two ago where, when entering a house the soldiers were told that the person under a blanket was an ill relative, and it turned out to be an abducted "westerner".
The only thing I regret about those stories is that the fate of the stinking lying scum in never included in the story.
---The young man rushed to open the door and greeted the group of about 10 Marines and an interpreter---
Too many Marines involved. An Egyptian witness.Too many bizarre details for an email about a tragic event that has just happened. Smells very funny. Blanks for the rifle? :^)
Think Gitmo. Barf
Sorry, but what the soldiers did there was wrong and unfortunate. There should be accountability. We cannot simply excempt those guilty of negligience
excempt=exempt
It doesn't sound like our Marines. The whole thing reads like a set up or fiction.
I suggest that we wait for the facts- right now we know NOTHING. I personally would give the benefit of the doubt to our brave marines.
This makes no sense. The other side of this bizarre story needs to be heard before jumping to conclusions. No gunshot heard? Why leave witnesses? No one mentioned that their cousin was the ambassador? Even so, why are we supposed to believe a pro-U.S. Iraqi couldn't have anti-U.S. relatives?
This is hamfisted propaganda on par with the North Koreans.
Gotta make SURE no question how he died : "they killed him". Maybe they had to? No, they obviously ENJOYED killing him : they smiled at each other as the mother wailed in anguish. Those monstrous Americans!
What the heck does that mean? Its late and my brain is fogging but that seems a non statement to me.
If you believe this story you have no need for a forum like this which seeks truth and validation. You would be more at home at DU.
I don't buy it. This story makes no sense. The boy is happy to practice his english, so they execute him? He has blanks for a rifle? The family is happy and relaxed, but the marines murder one son and beat another?
Then leave, smiling at the mother?
Either it is total fiction, or there is much, much more to the story. Either it didn't happen at all, or they are telling so little of the story as to amount to a lie. The marines are not from Mars, they are people we know. Under what conditions would you enter a house, execute someone, and then leave with a smile for his mother?
Thats what I thought. Either it never happened, or it was payback. But in the kind of war we are fighting, if there was reason for payback, there was much more reason to take him in and sweat him for information.
No, I don't buy it.
In your fantasy world, where one-sided uncorroborated accounts sets you off in a moral high-horse hissy-fit, it must get lonely.
In my adult world, one gets all the facts first, then has a hissy fit. Any outrage which follows the word "if" is useless. Your accepting the one-sided report tells me all I care to know.
Have a nice day.
at the moment, I don't buy this account.
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