This is a short follow-up to my diary on US war correspondent Steven Vincent’s death. Vincent was shot to death August 3 after being kidnapped the night before. Witnesses saw him and his interpreter forced into a white van, similar to the Basra security vans. His interpreter was also shot but she survived. His body was found on the side of the highway. The Scotsman has the story that Vincent was killed over his plans to marry his Muslim interpreter.
Steven Vincent was shot a week before the planned wedding to Nouriya Itais and had already delivered a $2,500 dowry to her family.
The disclosure casts new light on the grip of Islamic religious sects in the British-run south- east of Iraq – raising concern that they will take control once troops start to withdraw. Mr Vincent was abducted from his hotel three days after writing a piece in the New York Times accusing British officials of allowing religious parties to infiltrate the Basra police.
more…
In America, his death was taken as retribution for his article. But in London yesterday, British officials pointed out that the police in Basra believed it was retribution for his affair. LINK
From his American wife:
“Steve always wanted to be a writer,” said Lisa Ramaci, who was married to Vincent for 13 years. “When I met him, he was a cab driver, then he was an art journalist for 10 years, but wanted to get into political journalism. Our place had a great view of the World Trade Center, and September 11 set him on this course.” [Excellent article on Vincent’s last days.]
So the Basra extremists are out to control ‘mixed marriages’ now and this gives us some preview of life in the new Iraq.
Great, just great. We’ve really made progress in Iraq, haven’t we….
Saddam’s secular society looks better and better.
David Horowitz says that one the the great advances in Iraq, one of the “many” the US is responsible for, is new rights for women.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, the prospective bride wasn’t murdered but maimed.
Lord, the guy paid the bride price…wasn’t that respect enough?
.
Excellent coverage once again sybil! Thank you.
An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, 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. 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.
So wrote American freelance journalist Steven Vincent in a piece that appeared in the New York Times this past weekend.
And then a death car came for him.
Are there two translators involved with Steven Vincent: his fiancé Nouriya Itais and his longtime translator Nour Weidi?
~~~
~~~
Hm. I wonder if these people had contacted him before and told him to convert to their brand of Islam “or else”? And when he refused, killed him to prevent him from marrying (and, in their minds, converting) his translator?
Or was it a more simple bigotry killing?
‘bigotry’?
Earth to Egarwaen: the guy was already married; he was trying to commit biga – MY.
If that right wing asshole had tried to marry my daughter while he was already married, I probably would have done the same thing once I found ont.
How stupid do you have to be to try shit like that?
Please — there are enough actual VICTIM victims in Iraq that we don’t have to waste our tears over this pompous dimwit.
Sounds to me like he was divorced. Got a link to support your assertion that this man deserved to die, and an argument to support executing bigamists? Until you do, you’ve got a 1 from me.
I can’t argue with how it ‘sounds to you’ but the actual fact is that he was still married when he was killed:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/07/wirq107.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08
/07/ixworld.html
This moron came to Iraq because he ‘wanted to get into political journalism’, picked fights with locals over cultural issues he knew jack shit about, got his fiancee (the second one) badly hurt and could have gotten her killed like himself, and maybe — just maybe — after mourning for the 100,000 + dead Iraqis killed in the war Vincent supported, who unlike him didn’t die as a direct result of their own stupidity, I might shed a tear for this self-aggrandizing dunderhead.
But it’s pretty low on my list of things to care about.
Oh and BTW all comments go double for Michael Kelley.
Now, if we can only get Andrew Sullivan, Peter Beinart, Matthew Yglesias and the rest of the pro-war ‘journalists’ to go follow Vincent and Kelley’s example, that’d be a good start.
Good riddance to bad rubbish!
Right. So the best you’ve got is an article from the extremist right-wing Daily Telegraph that accuses Vincent of having tried to marry for visa purposes… Despite the fact that polygamy is illegal in the US?
And you have still to explain how, even if he were a polygamist, this justifies his murder. And why we should not feel sorrow for his death, as we would for the death of any human being, especially in light of his informative articles on the state of affairs in Iraqi. Your comment seems to deny that he is human, which I consider disgusting.
is something I am always willing to do. Vincent was a right winger who redeemed himself in the end by trying to bring us the truth of the situation in Iraq. He gained the respect of journalists no matter what their politics as one of the rare unembedded war correspondents in Iraq. If he was interested in just propagating the right wing hawk side of the story he would have been embedded with the troops.
Your comment is very interesting as an example of telling the other side of the story in the lowest possible terms. There is a kernel of truth in everything you say but it is too hyperbolic for me to accept.
I agree with your disdain for the war pimps and I would add Chris Hitchens and Michael Ignatieff to the list, as I patiently wait for their apologies.
So you’re saying that anyone murdered wasn’t actually murdered if that murder was done to someone who was having an affair? I haven’t seen that particular definition. Is there a new issue of the dictionary?
While you’re here, have you tried rock soup:
Boil water. Add rock. Season to taste.
The point isn’t that it was done “to” someone was having an affair, it was done because he was having an affair.
If you trouble yourself to read what I wrote and to read the comment I was replying to, you’ll see that the original commenter was making a ridiculous assertion — that Vincent was killed because of “bigotry”.
Don’t be an idiot — facts and logic are important.
If the man was murdered and the woman was maimed because they were having an affair then this is extreme religious violence. What word is a fair fit for the idea that anyone who does not conduct their sex lives according to YOUR PERFECT RELIGION is subject to death or torture? Perhaps bigot is too soft a word. It lacks the vicious force as it is so widely used. Sociopath might work, but when the society is governed by sociopaths, well does the concept still apply?
I would conduct endless discourse with my daughter if she decided to have such an affair. I would seriously examine my parenting, and perhaps demand family counseling. But killing someone for having consensual sex of which I disapprove? No one should be killed for having any kind of consensual sex. Even slimeballs.
Off topic: Sybil, I mailed you to alert you of my post on whaling the at ET the other day, as you requested back in June.
From In the Red Zone (Blog), Fallen Virtue, 24 June ’05:
At the end of our conversation–translated by Layla–the sheikh told us he had many other ideas and thoughts he wanted to share. This sounded good, and as we left his house, I asked Layla to set up another appointment with him. She refused. Wouldn’t say why. This angered me, we had words, she stormed off–and it was only a few days later that she told me what had occured. Seems the oh-so-respectable sheikh had offered during the interview to make her his second wife (he already had one), showering upon her promises of a car, a house, money.
Corruption runs deep over there. Power corrupts….
This rumormongering disturbs me. I know there are people out there who have been spreading the story that Vincent was involved with his interpreter, mostly so they can turn this into a story about what awful people the insurgents are. And his wife of 13 years has publicly stated that she doesn’t believe he was having an affair, so unless we know differently, don’t we owe a little more respect to a dead man than to propagate rumors like this?
There is also a story going around that maybe they weren’t romantically involved, but he was simply going to marry her for visa reasons; again, this doesn’t seem to fit with the fact that he’s already married, and there seems to be no reliable corroboration whatsoever.
I don’t know what motivated the animals who killed Steven Vincent, but it seems to me we owe him – and his widow – more respect than to speculate about these sorts of personal issues.