Tragic End To a Reporter's Story

By Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor. Posted August 4, 2005.

BAGHDAD -- In three articles for The Christian Science Monitor newspaper over the past month, Steven Vincent deftly captured the criminal-induced confusion of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, the jockeying for power between rival militias within government departments, and the growing use of political assassination that foreshadowed his own murder Tuesday.

The body of the 49-year-old American reporter and author was recovered shortly after midnight in the southern city of Basra, where he'd based himself for the past three months writing about the Shiite militias, and rampant corruption among local politicians and cops.

He's the first American journalist killed in Iraq since the US-led occupation -- others have died of illness or in accidents. A resident of New York City, Mr. Vincent witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, and in his horror he felt inspired at a later age to become a war correspondent, says his wife, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent. Last year, he wrote "In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq."

"He watched the World Trade Center burn and collapse, he saw people jumping to their death from the north tower, and he wanted to do something to help the war on terror," says Ms. Ramaci-Vincent, his wife of 13 years. "He was too old to enlist. He thought he could go to the war zone and try to open people's eyes to what was happening."

At around 6:30 p.m. he and his Iraqi translator Nouraya Itais Wadi (also known as Nour al-Khal) left a money-changer's shop on bustling Istiqlal Street. Then, police say, four gunmen jumped out of a white car (Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi told the Associated Press that it was a police car, something confirmed by eyewitnesses) and hustled the pair inside, shouting to bystanders, "Don't interfere, we're the police," according to witnesses interviewed by an Iraqi journalist who has worked for American news media and feared retribution if he was identified in this story.

Mr. Vincent had told his wife in recent weeks that he was growing increasingly concerned for his and Ms. Wadi's safety. He was getting strange phone calls with no one there, and Nouraya had been approached on the street and berated for working with an American.

"He was digging deeper and deeper into this weird tangle of criminal gangs, and Iranians coming over, and the corruption, and he told me he was starting to get worried,'' says Ramaci-Vincent, said her husband was planning to leave the city soon. "In his time there he had developed a real affinity for the Iraqi people, as trite as that may sound. He really loved them."

Vincent and Wadi were then taken to a house somewhere on the city's outskirts and were held and questioned for roughly five hours, according to a Basra police officer, who requested anonymity. Then, blindfolded and with their hands bound behind them, they were taken to Al Rebaat neighborhood in Basra and shot repeatedly. Ms. Wadi survived the attack and is now in serious condition at the Basra Teacher's Hospital.

She has been interviewed by the local police, and the police official said the murderers had beaten them, and shouted at her for working with a foreigner, something they said was un-Islamic. Lubna Abdul Hamid, an Iraqi woman working for the National Democratic Institute, a US-based nongovernmental organization, was murdered on Monday. Iraqi journalists interviewed by phone in Basra say they believe the murder was motivated by her American ties.

In an opinion piece published in The New York Times on Aug. 1, Vincent wrote about Shiite political parties that maintain their own militias in the city, and he reported allegations that off-duty police are used to assassinate former members of Saddam Hussein's regime and other political opponents.

"An Iraqi police lieutenant confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations -- mostly of former Baath Party members -- that take place in Basra each month," Vincent wrote. "He told me that there is even a sort of 'death car': a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment."

Dan Murphy is a staff writer at The Christian Science Monitor.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from World! Sign up now »