Iraqi Policemen Tied to Killing of 2 Americans

March 13, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 — American officials said today that four men arrested in connection with the killing of two American civilians working for the American occupation authority were apparently members of the new 70,000-member American-trained Iraqi police force.

A fifth man seized in the killings was a former member of the police force under Saddam Hussein, an American spokesman said, while the sixth man was described as a civilian. The killings occurred on a road near the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Tuesday, when gunmen pursued the Americans and their Iraqi interpreter and raked them with automatic rifle fire.

The slayings have shocked the Americans here, who now face the possibility that the men to whom they turn for cooperation in fighting the insurgency may include insurgent infiltrators or those paid to do their work. When the killings were first reported, officials said the killers were rebels disguised as policemen, but they said Friday that four of the arrested men had current and valid documents identifying them as policemen.

At a news conference in Baghdad, American officials identified one of the victims as Fern L. Holland, 33, of Tulsa, Okla., a Washington lawyer who was in Iraq to lead classes in democracy and women's rights. Her American companion was identified as Robert J. Zangis, 44, of Prince William County, Va., a computer software salesman and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot who fought in Iraq last year as a reservist, then returned here to work with Iraqi newspapers and broadcasting outlets on issues of press freedom.

The two were the first civilians working for the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in the insurgency that has been fighting a 130,000-member American force for much of the last year.

American officials refused to give further details of the attack on the civilians, saying they were holding back out of respect for the victims' families and because an F.B.I. team that has joined Iraqi investigators has yet to complete its work. But they vigorously defended their vetting procedures for police recruits, saying police forces everywhere have "corrupt" individuals who escape detection on entry.

The rebuilding of the Iraqi police began when the country's security forces virtually evaporated last year and the Americans disbanded Saddam Hussein's army. United States officials say there are now 150,000 Iraqis serving in the newly reconstituted army, police, civil defense force and border guard, as well as a security force known as the Facilities Protection Service. They say many of them have served bravely in the fight against the insurgents and suffered high casualties. The Iraqi police have lost 325 men from insurgent attacks during the occupation, and with other Iraqi security units, have taken more casualties than American troops have, the Americans say.

Many of the Iraqis in the security forces, the Americans acknowledge, are veterans of Mr. Hussein's security forces who have been only hastily vetted for ties to the brutality of the past and given only short courses in Western-style practices and values.

In the case of the new police force, American officials say, about 90 percent of the recruits were policemen during Mr. Hussein's rule, and most of them have been given uniforms and weapons after what the Americans call a "transition and integration program," a three-week course in Western styles of policing, respect for the law and concern for individual and community rights.

The killing of the Americans raised perplexing questions about their own security. One is why Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangis were permitted to travel in a car without armor plating or armed guards. Officials declined comment.

A second question is whether the Americans were attacked because of their work advocating Western values that sometimes conflict with the conservative, Islam-based mores of Iraqi society. Again, Americans officials declined to say, but they offered a defense of the promotion of women's and human rights that has occurred at Hilla, the two Americans' destination, and other centers.

One official with knowledge of the killings said: "Are there short-term costs involved? You bet, we've experienced that this week. But is it worth it? We think it is."

[Early Saturday, two American soldiers were killed in Tikrit when a roadside bomb destroyed their Humvee, The Associated Press said, quoting Capt. Tim Crowe of the Army. The attack came a day after the military said two soldiers were killed in a similar blast near Habbaniya.]

Until American officials give a fuller account, it will be impossible to determine exactly what happened in the attack at Abu Gharaq, a farming area beside the Euphrates River that the victims were passing through en route to the southern regional headquarters of the occupation authority at Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.

One clue left at the site the day after the attack were tire tracks suggesting that the Americans' car had veered off the divided highway, across a median strip and oncoming lanes, then down an earth embankment until it struck another embankment 70 yards farther on. American officials said this suggested that the two Americans lost control when their vehicle was fired on at speed.

Iraqi police officers in Karbala offered more evidence on Friday. They identified several of the arrested men as belonging to the drugs division of the Karbala police, which has its offices opposite the American-financed women's center that Ms. Holland, Mr. Zangis and their interpreter had often visited. This suggested that the killers might have conducted some sort of surveillance of the Americans beforehand.

"They are from our police department," a Karbala police spokesman, Rahman al-Mussawi Diab, told Agence France-Presse. "They are suspected of being involved. The case is under investigation, but they are innocent until proven guilty."

The A.F.P. report also quoted the Hilla police chief, Keis Hamser Abud, as saying that witnesses had identified the killers as having worn police uniforms, and that most of the men now held as suspects were wearing uniforms when arrested.

Mr. Abud suggested that the men might have been paid to carry out the attack — a pattern American commanders have described as common during the insurgency. "We are living in a time when we cannot have pure policemen 100 percent of the time," Mr. Abud said. "There are policemen who are weak to bribery."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company