Rape victim was 15 year old child
Details emerge in alleged atrocity by U.S. troops
By Ellen Knickmeyer
07/03/06 "Washington
Post" -- -- BAGHDAD, Iraq —
Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided
in a neighbor.
As pretty as she was young, the girl had attracted the unwelcome
attention of U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint that the girl had to
pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city
of Mahmoudiya, her mother told the neighbor.
Abeer told her mother often in her last days that the soldiers had
made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said this
weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl's
mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10.
Fakhriyah feared the Americans might come for her daughter at night,
at their home. She asked her neighbor if Abeer might sleep at his
house, with the women there.
Janabi said he agreed. Then, "I tried to reassure her, remove some
of her fear," Janabi said. "I told her, the Americans would not do
such a thing."
Abeer did not live to take up the offer of shelter at Janabi's home.
Instead, attackers came to the girl's house the next day, apparently
separating Abeer from her mother, father and 7-year-old sister.
Janabi and others knowledgeable about the incident said they
believed the attackers raped Abeer in another room. Medical
officials who handled the bodies said the girl had been raped, but
they did not elaborate.
Before leaving, the attackers fatally shot the four family members —
two of Abeer's brothers had been away at school — and attempted to
set Abeer's body on fire, according to Janabi, another neighbor who
spoke on condition of anonymity, the mayor of Mahmoudiya and a
hospital administrator with knowledge of the death certificates and
of the case overall.
The U.S. military said last week that authorities were investigating
allegations of a rape and killings in Mahmoudiya by soldiers of the
502nd Infantry Regiment, part of the 4th Infantry Division.
The mayor of Mahmoudiya, Mouyad Fadhil Saif, said Sunday that the
case was being investigated by the U.S. military as an alleged
atrocity.
Janabi was one of the first people to arrive at the house after the
attack, he said Saturday, speaking at the home of local tribal
leaders. He said he found Abeer sprawled dead in a corner, her hair
and a pillow next to her consumed by fire, and her dress pushed up
to her neck.
"I was sure from the first glance that she had been raped," he said.
Despite the reassurances he had given the girl's mother earlier,
Janabi said, "I wasn't surprised what had happened, when I found
that the suspicion of the mother was correct."
The U.S. military has not identified the victims. U.S. military
officials contacted this weekend said they did not know the names of
the people involved or most other details of the case.
The military official pointed to one discrepancy in the accounts.
Preliminary information in the military investigation put the age of
the alleged rape victim at 20, rather than 15, as reported by her
neighbors, officials and hospital records and officials in
Mahmoudiya.
U.S. soldiers at the scene initially ascribed the killings to Sunni
Arab insurgents active in the area, the U.S. military and local
residents said. That puzzled villagers, who knew the family was
Sunni, Janabi said.
Three months after the incident, two soldiers of the 502nd came
forward to say that soldiers of the unit were responsible, a U.S.
military official said last week. The U.S. military began an
investigation the next day, the official said.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
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