BlackFive

Zeyad has an interview from a freelance journalist who spoke to Zaydun's family...no name was given for the journalist.

Here is part of the freelance journalist's interview:

There was a checkpoint of the Samarra defense force nearby, and they noticed the American patrol and pointed their lights at them. Here the soldiers seemed to change plans and ordered the two boys into the vehicle again and moved on...

and some words to the journalist from the surviving cousin:

"...On Friday 2/1/2004, a store owner in Samarra employed us to pick up a cargo of toilet parts from Baghdad. We left early on Saturday morning and after we finished buying and loading the cargo and were on our way back to Samarra, there was a sudden failure in the truck which forced us to stay in Balad for a few hours."

and

"...The soldiers left in their vehicles and I got out of the reeds and started to climb the stone walls of the sadda alturabiya and I was up on the road near the Samarra defense force checkpoint. I was wet and shivering, they took me in, helped me undress, and supplied me with clothes and and blankets. They told me to stay till the morning, I was still scared stiff of what might be still planned for me but I drifted away into sleep."

What I want to know is why hasn't the freelance journalist talked to the Samarra defense force to verify this? How about the parts for the business man in Samarra or the store in Baghdad?

Also, Lucy (who is a commenter on Healing Iraq) outlined a few glaring inconsistencies in the story. For example, there was no mention of flashlight waving GI's in this version (the interview) of the story. And then there is a discrepancy in the baseball jacket part:

Here is what the mother of Zaydun wrote in her letter to the authorities:

After days of search we found my sons jacket floating with the stream, it shall remain with me as a memory and a symbol of the injustice brought against him by soldiers of the United States of America's army, who came to our country under the banners of human rights and democracy only to send my son to his demise on his wedding days...

Here is what she told the Iraqi freelance journalist:

They tell me they have found his jacket. I wanted to have it, but they kept it away from me. I only want to hold it and press it to my heart because it was the last thing he was wearing in his final moments..

My previous posts on this subject are here and here.