Family Seeks Justice in Case Of Iraqi Slain by U.S. Troops

The official report from the morgue said Sajid was shot five times, once in the leg, once in the throat, once in the armpit and twice in the chest.

In the room where Sajid died, his brothers Haider and Jawad showed the holes in the wall and floor where the bullets struck after passing through Sajid's body.

The electricity was out again, and the soft light from a broken window created shadows on the walls as the brothers reenacted the scene to show how they had been placed.

They had been tied up in the kitchen across a dim hallway, forced to kneel on the tile, their foreheads pressed against the cold cement wall. They were there when they heard the shots that killed their brother, Haider and Jawad said.

Haider said that when he heard the shots, he asked if his brother had been killed. He said a soldier told them they were just checking the gun that Haider had brought to them, the Kalashnikov assault rifle that Sajid kept upstairs to protect his family. Haider said the soldier then struck him in the head with the butt of his gun, leaving a wound that had to be stitched.

In a video of Sajid's funeral procession on May 20, Haider can be seen in front, striking his head and his hands in a gesture of mourning. A blood-spotted bandage around his head covers the wound that was visible as a scar last week.

Sajid's coffin, borrowed from a local mosque, is shown draped in the Iraqi flag, the sign of a martyr.

U.S. soldiers had been to this neighborhood before, the family and neighbors said, but there had been few clashes between residents and the troops. "It was very quiet," said Nasr Kadhim, another of Sajid's brothers, who lives next door. "When they used to come, they used to knock on the door, and they would take the family outside, search the house and then leave."

One of the things that bothers Qasim the most, he said, is the way in which his brother died, killed at home with his wife and children in the next room.

"Saddam was a tyrant, but he did not commit such an inhumane crime," Qasim said. "This happened in the quietness of night, which goes against our values and the religious values of Moses and Jesus and Muhammad."

Even if the Americans believed that his brother was guilty, he did not deserve to die without having a chance to defend himself, Qasim said. This is the irony of the new justice that he cannot comprehend.

"This crime happened after Abu Ghraib and after the apology of President Bush," Qasim said, referring to the scandal in which U.S. soldiers were accused of abusing Iraqi detainees in their custody. "We wish for the American press to publish the truth, for the American society to see this."

Sajid's eldest son, Ali, 12, stood by his uncle's side as he talked. The women of the household sat on rugs around the perimeter of the room, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard. Sajid's widow, completely covered in black, including her face and hands, tried to comfort her youngest child, 1-year-old Abbas.

"He was the source of our living," Ali said of his father. "Why did they do that? Even Saddam didn't kill a person in front of his children."

Ali said he used to like the U.S. soldiers, that he felt safer when they were around.

"Now I see them, I feel that they're going to kill me," he said.

Special correspondent Bassam Sabti contributed to this report.