Christian Peacemaker Teams

Details: On 25 June, 2005 in the village of Al-Shakh Hadid U.S. Marines staged a house raid on the home of Abdul-Hadi Al-Sumaida. His son, Mohammed, who is also the cousin to the current Ambassador from Iraq to the United Nations, Samir Sumaida’ie, let the Marines into the house. They asked him if the family had any weapons and he took them upstairs to show them the rifle owned by the family. Later the rest of the family was forced to go outside. After the Marines left the family discovered the body of Mohammed upstairs with a single bullet wound in the neck.

Action: Below is a sample letter you can use. Write, call or email your senator or representative letting them know you want a full investigation of this matter by the Senate and House Armed Services Committee. Let them know you want the many other cases of killings during house raids documented by human rights organizations in Iraq investigated as well. Let them know that killing innocent people will only fuel the insurgency in Iraq.

Additional Information: Use the following links for more information on this matter.

Iraq envoy accuses US of killing (BBC)
Or Ambassador says Marines killed his kin (San Francisco Chronicle)

To contact your senators and representatives: If you don’t have contact information go to the following link capwiz.com/fconl/home and enter your zip code. For those people in Canada and the United Kingdom consider emailing your U.S. embassy to express your concern that a full and fair investigation takes place as soon as possible.

We need to act now: Iraqis have been killed in house raids since the first days of the U.S. invasion. Not all have the characteristics of being a cold blooded execution as in this case. However human rights groups have received consistent testimonies from families that their loved ones were killed without any provocation or justification by U.S. military units. Everyone in Iraq is not a terrorist even though the U.S. military operates under that assumption when doing random house raids. Unless this practice is changed everyone in Iraq will come to hate the U.S. and be driven to support those who wish to drive U.S. forces off Iraqi soil using methods that are equally violent.

Thank you,
CPT Iraq

Sample Letter:

Dear Senator/Representative __________,

I am writing today about a disturbing event that occurred in the western part of Iraq on 25 June 2005. U.S. Marines were conducting a house-to-house search in the village of Al-Shakh Hadid. They entered the home of Abdul-Hadi Al-Sumaida. His son, Mohammed, let them in and when the Marines asked if there were any weapons in the house Mohammed took them upstairs to show them the family rifle. That was the last the family ever saw of him. They were not allowed upstairs and were then taken outside. After the Marines left they went upstairs and found Mohammed lying dead with a single bullet wound in his neck. This matter would never have received any international attention except of the fact that Mohammed is the cousin of the current Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations, Samir Sumaid’ie.

I am disturbed about this event in particular and even more disturbed to know that human rights groups in Iraq have documented other instances of U.S. forces taking the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians under the guise of our “war” on terrorism. I am unconvinced that the U.S. military will conduct a full and fair investigation of this and other killings like it. With the history of how the military investigated prisoner abuse allegations it is unlikely that justice will be served in this matter.

I would ask that the Armed Services Committee create an independent investigation of this matter and create a mechanism whereby Iraqi human rights organizations can turn over information on other such killings by U.S. forces.

We cannot say we are bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq as long as our military continues to violate the basic human rights of the Iraqi people. Only by having a full congressional investigation will the people of Iraq, and the rest of the world, be assured that what we say and what we do are the same thing.

Sincerely,

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Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical violence-reduction program with roots in the historic peace churches. Teams of trained peace workers live in areas of lethal conflict around the world. CPT has been present in Iraq since October, 2002. To learn more about CPT, please visit www.cpt.org. Photos of CPT projects may be viewed at www.cpt.org/gallery