US journalist Steven Vincent sought to expose assassinations in Iraq, writes Sean O'Driscoll in New York.
Steven Vincent wrote an opinion article for last Sunday's New York Times in which he accused rogue police in the Iraqi city of Basra of carrying out assassinations on behalf of fundamentalist Shia leaders.
The article argued that security sector reform in Basra was failing average Iraqis who simply want to go about their lives. Basran politics and everyday life was increasingly coming under the control of Shia religious groups, Vincent wrote, to which many of Basra's rank-and-file police officers had loyalties. The British authorities in the area seemed unable or unwilling to do anything about it.
He added that "an Iraqi police lieutenant . . . confirmed to me the widespread rumours 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 wrote. "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."
Steven Vincent's body was found on Tuesday two miles north of Basra city centre. He had been dumped in the street after being shot three times in the chest and his hands were tied in front of him with plastic cord.
His interpreter Nooriya Tuaiz (30) was also shot and seriously wounded. She had been warned not to work for him and, according to one journalist who knew him, he had been threatened in recent weeks after he revealed to the police that he was working on a book about Basra.
"He told me that he was getting worried because things were getting a little hairy," says his wife Lisa, as she and Steven's mother discuss his funeral arrangements four days later.
On the kitchen table, there is a half-filled dental records form she has to complete before the US army can release his body.
Lisa and her mother, Edith, sit at the table and discuss which church to hold the funeral service after Steven's body is flown back through Kuwait.
Lisa recalls the warning signs in recent weeks but said she didn't know until yesterday that Steven had been directly threatened.
"He was getting a lot of wrong numbers on his cell phone and his translator had been given warnings. Somebody came up to her on the street and asked her why she was working for that American journalist who was asking all those questions." Lisa is convinced that Steven was killed because of the New York Times article. "He had a woman translator, which was unheard of, and the combination of him asking all these probing questions, I think it all added up in some people's mind to an equation that they did not like. They determined that it was time to get rid of him."
The impact of the loss hasn't fully reached her. One minute she is laughing and telling funny stories, the next she is slumped on the sofa, crying. "I keep thinking that I am going to pick up the phone and he is going to be on the other end, telling me that it's going to be ok," she says.
She shows me his study in the front room. His chair is still pulled out from his desk, which is lined by books on Arab history.
Steven Vincent's path to Iraq was not typical. He and Lisa had been bohemian squatters, taking over their East Village apartment in the 1980s, living without running water, windows, electricity or heat for years until they and other squatters formed a co-op and bought their apartments from the city for a few hundred dollars. Over the years, Steven drove a cab at night and formed a local community group to preserve East Village architecture. He became an art critic, writing for magazines. Eventually, he grew tired of his work and wanted something new. On 9/11, from a rooftop, he saw the aircraft hit the World Trade Center. That "ultra-politicised him," says Lisa. "He still dabbled in art journalism but the majority of his attention was focused on politics and it just so happened that he fell under the sway of Iraq and kept going back there."
He went back and forth to Iraq after the US invasion, writing about daily life there for the Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal and other papers. Much of his best work was on his blogger site, where he wrote about the Basra police. His book, In the Red Zone - A Journey into the Soul of Iraq, earned favourable reviews.
"He went in further than most of the other journalists who had spent their whole lives at the job. I'm not going to be fatuous and say he died doing what he loved," says Lisa. "The truth is that he was tired of Basra, he was cranky, he wanted to come home. But he died doing something that he really thought was right."