July 12, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 11 - A few feet from a gray waterfall of stinking untreated sewage, Firas Shihab Ahmed, a chemical engineer at the Iraqi Ministry of the Environment, reached over the side of his boat on Sunday and plunged an amber glass bottle into the Tigris River.

He filled the bottle, holding it with a latex-gloved hand, and marked it as his 14th sample of the day, taken at a place known as the Wahda discharge point - the source of the sewage cascading into the river.

As humdrum and low-tech as that action is by American standards, Mr. Ahmed had just performed an act of great courage. Three months ago, for making exactly the same measurement in the Tigris, he and several other colleagues from the ministry were shot at, rounded up, hooded and handcuffed by the Iraqi police working with American troops who apparently decided that he had been acting suspiciously.