checkpoints in iraq:
My cousin Sabah took me to the checkpoint where his father died, not far from his home on the outskirts of Kirkuk. Kakarash had gone out first thing in the morning, before breakfast, to get petrol before the queues built up. As luck would have it, I found several eyewitnesses who had seen the whole incident.
(...) A group of local men, clearly distressed by what they had seen, told me the soldiers kept on firing after my uncle had turned around and tried to get away. 'They obviously shot to kill him,' one man told me. 'If not, they could have stopped after the first shot, they could have given him a chance to see what was he going to do next, but they just shot him dead.'
(...) I went to see the car in a local garage. I counted 86 bullet holes. The rear windscreen had been shot out - the front windscreen was intact. The doctor who had certified my uncle's death, Dr Ahmed Mansur, told me there were three entry wounds in his body - two in his back and one in the palm of his hand as it gripped the steering wheel. All three came from the back. 'We call these high-velocity missile injuries', he said. 'Their entry is small but the exit makes a big hole and inside it tears apart all the tissues ... even if you try to save the victims they still die.'
(...) 'He was happy they took Saddam away from power, and was saying we will finally have a good life,' Sabah told me. 'Before, I too was very happy about seeing the Americans here, but not any more. Anyone submitted to this injustice will dislike them. Have they come here to save us from Saddam or to kill us?'