Another reporter silenced: update

Original post.

A story by Tom Lasseter and Yasser Salihee written for Knight Ridder was published on Monday 27 June 2005 and reported that “days after Iraq’s new Shi‘i-led [puppet] government was announced on April 28, the bodies of Sunni Muslim men began turning up at the capital’s central morgue after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.”

The American agency reported that Fayiq Baqr, the director and chief forensic investigator at the central Baghdad morgue, said that the corpses first caught his attention because the men appeared to have been killed in methodical fashion. Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured.

[...]

Knight Ridder reported that American occupation authorities and collaborating Iraqi officials said that the so-called police murders are “not being investigated systematically.” The agency said, however, that in dozens of interviews with families and officials, and through a review of medical records a Knight Ridder reporter and two special correspondents found more than 30 examples of this type of killing in less than a week.

[...]

While it is evident to forensic investigator Fayiq Baqr what is going on, he too fears to state bluntly what is going on. Knight Ridder reported that “asked who he thought was behind the upsurge in such executions, Baqr said, ‘It is a very delicate subject for society when you are blaming the [puppet] police officers. . . . It is not an easy issue.” But Baqr cites the clear evidence of what is going on: “We hear that they are captured by the police and then the bodies are found killed . . . it’s obviously increasing.”

In fact the abductions, tortures and murders have been increasing at an overwhelming rate. Knight Ridder reported that Baqr said he had been unable to catalog the deaths because so many bodies have been brought through his morgue and because he doesn’t have enough doctors.

Before March 2003, he said, the morgue handled 200 to 250 suspicious deaths a month, about 16 of which included firearm injuries. He said he now sees 700 to 800 suspicious deaths a month, with some 500 having firearm wounds.

[...]

The Knight Ridder report concluded by noting that Yasser Salihee was a special correspondent who worked on the report. He was shot and killed last week in Baghdad in circumstances that remain unclear. Special correspondent Mohammed al Dulaimy also contributed to the report from Baghdad, Knight Ridder added.

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“Yasser Salihee, 30, was killed while driving alone in Baghdad on June 24, his day off. A single bullet pierced his windshield and struck him in the head. It appeared that a U.S. sniper shot him.” - The Guardian, June 30, 2005.
  Stan Goff post