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Critical US Journalist Shot Dead in Iraq

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Critical US Journalist Shot Dead in Iraq
Submitted by editor on August 3, 2005 - 12:58pm.
By Michael George
Source: Reuters

An American journalist has been found shot dead in Basra four days after he wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times criticising the spread of Shiite Islamist fundamentalism in the southern Iraqi city.

Steven Vincent and a translator were kidnapped by gunmen after leaving a hotel last night, witnesses said.

A US diplomat said the journalist's body was found later in the night.

His death appeared to mark the first targeted killing of a Western journalist in Iraq since the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Other reporters have been killed after being swept up in the violence plaguing the country, but they were apparently killed for being Westerners rather than because they were journalists.

"An investigation has been launched to determine who was behind this," the diplomat said.

A nurse in a Basra hospital said Mr Vincent, a freelance investigative journalist and art critic from New York City, who had been working in Basra for several weeks, was shot three times in the chest.

Photographs from the morgue showed a red cloth around Vincent's neck and plastic handcuffs on his wrists, suggesting he had been blindfolded and bound.

"Steve, Hay al-Rebaat," an Arabic tag identifying Mr Vincent and the area of central Basra where his body was found, said.

Mr Vincent's Iraqi translator, Nouriya Ita'is, was hit by two bullets in the chest and two in a leg, but was in stable condition, her sister said.

The New York Times opinion piece criticised the failure of British forces to clamp down on what Mr Vincent described as a city that was "increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream ... to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr".

The article also focused on the Basra police force, quoting a police lieutenant as saying a few officers were perpetrating many of what he said were hundreds of assassinations of mostly former members of Saddam's Baath Party each month.

"He told me that there is even a sort of 'death car': a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment," Mr Vincent wrote.

Iraqi Arab Sunni leaders accuse the Government of sanctioning Shiite hit squads working with security forces.

The Shiite-led Government denies the accusations.

Sectarian tensions have been rising since January elections empowered Shiites and sidelined Arab Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam and now form the bulk of the insurgency.

Relentless violence has raised fears of civil war.

Sunni Muslim militants from across the Arab world have mounted suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Shiites.

Al-Qaeda and other hardline groups have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners. Many were freed and some were shot or beheaded.

Mr Vincent was the author of a book on post-war Iraq, and he was researching another about the history of Basra, where about 8000 British troops are based.

He has published in the Wall Street Journal, US magazine Harper's and the Christian Science Monitor.

He also maintained a regular weblog of his experiences in Iraq.

An Iraqi journalist who worked with Mr Vincent said he had been speaking to a range of people in Basra for his research, including Iraqi officials and Christian residents.

Aside from a few attacks on British soldiers and Iraqi police, Iraq's second city has been relatively free of the violence gripping other parts of the country.

But residents complain Shiite fundamentalists have been gaining control over the city.

Christian alcohol sellers have been threatened and their shops damaged, they say.

Sadr, who led two violent uprisings against US troops, is one of the Shiite clerics with followers and influence in Basra, 550 km south-east of Baghdad.

Badr Brigades, the Iranian-trained militia of the Shiite party dominating the Government, has been accused of assassinating Sunnis and imposing fundamentalism.



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posted by Annamarie at 3:09 PM