US
Soldiers Shoot First,
No
Questions Asked
By Gethin Chamberlain
18 September 17, 2004
The
Scotsman
BAGHDAD -
His name was Ahmed Hameed and he was 36 years old. He had taken the
wrong turning up to the checkpoint on the July 14 Bridge which spans
the Tigris on the south-eastern edge of what used to be known in Baghdad
as the Green Zone, but which has now been renamed the International
Zone.
Now he lies in a
body-bag a few yards away from the US army gun tower which opened fire
on him as he tried to turn his moped around.
Soldiers from the
US Airborne surround him, those at the back peering over the shoulders
of the ones in front to get a better view as the bag is unzipped. In
the tower, the heavy .240-calibre machine-gun hangs limply on its mount,
pointing at the ground. The gunner is leaning on the parapet, looking
out across the city.
Ahmeds head
is turned away to one side, his mouth open, the blood which streaks
his face already dry. His right hand is by his side, the left curled
across his stomach. The fingers stop a few inches from the inch-wide
hole just above his groin. Someone has tried to stem the bleeding from
another hole in the top of his chest, but there was too much blood.
It has soaked his T-shirt, which is pulled up to expose the wounds,
and poured down his body, mingling with his sweat, leaving pale rivulets
across the skin.
Twenty yards away,
his maroon Honda Spacy moped lies on its right-hand side in front of
a concrete barrier. There is a sign painted on the barrier: it says
"Do not enter or you will be shot", in English and Arabic.
There is a small bullet entry hole in the top left-hand side of the
seat, and a much larger exit hole on the right-hand side of the rear
fairing. The bike must have been upright when the bullet struck, and
almost sideways on to the gun tower. Petrol has leaked from the tank
and on to the tarmac.
Captain Mohammhad
Mahde is taking in the details of the scene. Mahde is an officer in
the Iraqi police service, based inside the International Zone. He bends
low over Ahmeds body, pushing down his black nylon boxer shorts
with the blue stripe around the waistband which poke out above his grey
trousers, so that he can get a better look at the lower wound.
"He was coming
the wrong way," a US soldier is explaining to him, gesturing towards
the end of the bridges exit ramp away around the curve of the
concrete wall on the right-hand side of the road looking south.
"He didnt
stop. They hit him and he got up, and they fired at him again. He got
up again and started running away, and because he was running away they
didnt shoot him. But then he just sort of collapsed."
The body-bag is
zipped closed. Mahde stands up and walks towards the moped, and the
soldier follows. "We yelled at him to stop," he says. "He
passed a few of the signs to stop, but he just kept going."
Mahde walks past
another concrete barrier, painted in English and Arabic with three signs:
"Exit only", "Do not enter", and "No Stopping".
There is no problem with the Arabic, he says. It is quite clear. At
the foot of the exit ramp, a small crowd watches the soldiers and the
policemen as they walk slowly towards them. This is the reason the soldiers
called Mahdes police station; they wanted help to control the
crowd. Mahde, though, wants to know what happened. The soldiers eye
him warily, but no-one tries to stop him.
Mahde pulls out
a notebook, writes down a few things, asks the troops some more questions.
He walks on to a thin patch of sand that has been deposited on the tarmac.
It is damp in a couple of places, a slightly darker orange than the
rest. There is a small bloodstain on the checkpoint side of the line
of sand which has not been covered over. On the low concrete wall about
three feet away there are splashes where blood has sprayed up, and a
couple of flecks of flesh stick to the wall a foot or so closer to the
gun tower. "They killed him here," he says.
The soldiers say
no. "The man got back here and collapsed," a captain says.
"We just covered up the blood."
Ahmeds shoes
lie on the tarmac about four feet apart, between where his body now
lies and the spot where he died. The left shoe is closer to the blood-stained
sand, the right back towards the gun tower. They are brown leather,
quite new, a picture of a stag and the name of the maker, the Dawara
Company, embossed on the inner sole. On the bridge side of the final
concrete barrier between the shoes and Mahdes body, there are
four rough hollows where bullets struck. An American soldier points
them out; he refers to them as splash marks.
The call came in
to the police station a little after 10am from a US captain in the Airborne.
Dwight Murphy took it; he was sitting in Mahdes office at the
time, chatting to the captain. Murphy is the deputy commander for support
operations with the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, the organisation
set up by coalition forces to rebuild the Iraqi police service.
They got into Mahdes
police Land Cruiser, with its blue and white livery and blue and red
flashing light, and drove to the bridge. When they reached it, there
was a US Bradley armoured vehicle parked across the carriageway at the
southern end, the checkpoint end. Its main cannon was trained on the
approaching police car, as was the gun of the soldier in the turret.
With the index finger
of his right hand, the soldier made a horizontal circling gesture, then
pointed back up the carriageway, indicating that the car should turn
around and leave. Murphy held up his US identification card. The soldier
repeated his gesture.
The driver began
to swing the vehicle around, but Murphy had taken out his mobile phone
and was speaking to the captain who had called the police station. The
car stopped. The soldier in the turret was speaking into his headset,
his eyes still on the police car. He gestured the policemen forward.
Murphy is crouched
next to the sand, looking at the blood splashed up the wall. "He
was probably shot back here where his body fell," he says.
"Maybe he was
afraid," Mahde said. "Maybe he had explosives? He lived in
this city, he worked here, he knew this way. Why go here?" The
two men walk slowly back towards the moped. "We havent opened
it up yet," one soldier tells them.
One of the soldiers
picks up the machine and rests it on its stand. The right-hand mirror
has twisted round slightly, but there is no other obvious damage, save
for the bullet holes.
Another soldier
has fetched a jemmy; he pokes it under the seat and leans down on it
to pop open the lock. It takes a quarter of a minute, perhaps a little
longer, before the lock gives. The soldier places the seat on the ground.
Inside, there is nothing but a thin black plastic bag of the type used
in some of the citys shops. Inside the bag are two sheets of paper.
The soldier hands them to a captain, who looks at them briefly and hands
them to Mahde. They are Ahmeds identity papers. There is nothing
else in the bag.
Mahde asks them
to take the body to the morgue. The Americans do not like the idea.
Why cant the body be collected by the morgue, they ask. Mahde
says his men will take the body and the bike. He looks around him. "This
guy made a mistake, but he didnt put the bike in that place or
the shoes in that place," he says.
"Are you done
here?" the US captain asks. "Can we open the checkpoint again?"
Mahde nods. They can, he says. He has no authority over the US soldiers,
but he will make a report.
He and Murphy start
to walk back towards the police car. The US soldiers follow, grumbling
among themselves. They do not understand what is happening. One can
be heard complaining: "All the other bodies, they just put in the
truck and took them away."
© 2004 The
Scotsman