[Changleen]

This is just awesome. Following all those stories about the Iraqi Police and Security forces torturing and killing people, one of the Journalists who wrote about it for the NYT has been abducted and killed by THE POLICE! :angry:

US writer shot dead after criticising Shia regime

An American journalist who criticised the pervading influence of the Islamic militias in Basra has been shot dead in the British-controlled city.

Four days before his death Steven Vincent, writing in The New York Times, condemned the Shias' influence over Basra's police and said a police hit-squad was assassinating Saddam loyalists.

Vincent, 50, and his Iraqi translator, Nour Weidi, were abducted at gunpoint by five men in a police truck after leaving a currency exchange at a hotel on Tuesday evening, a senior officer said. The 50-year-old freelance journalist's body was found on a road south of the city with at least three gunshot wounds to the chest and one to the head.

Miss Weidi, who was also rumoured to be his girlfriend, was seriously wounded after being shot four times. Vincent, a New Yorker, had been openly critical of the Shia fundamentalist militias, loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times Vincent criticised the failure of British forces who, he said, had turned a blind eye to abuses of power by Shia extremists.

This just gets better and better. I am not sure any more what can or should be done about this. The US war has ****ed **** up so bad now. I think something drastic needs to be done, but I don't know what. Maybe this has all just got to play out. Well done GW and co. for causing so much death and destruction of hope for the future.