Abdul Latif refused to be interviewed for this article.
Ahmed Mushrif, 29, a fruit juice and ice cream vendor, said the imam was late for noon prayers. He entered as an overpowering stench suddenly filled the mosque, and he "asked all those praying to take the bodies to the cemetery."
"I didn't want to go, but I felt I had to," Mushrif said. So he joined about 40 men in 15 cars and headed to the martyrs' cemetery, where a sign at the entrance proclaims: "It is prohibited to bury anyone who is not a martyr." He said Abdul Latif warned the procession to keep the cars far apart from each other so that Iraqi police or coalition forces would not realize they were traveling together.
During a simple ceremony, "the preacher gave a speech, asking us to be united, because the seven who were killed weren't hurting the people as much as they were hurting the Americans," Mushrif said.
A notice from Zarqawi's group was posted on the mosque's gate this week announcing the deaths of the men and calling their killers "blasphemers, far from the religion of God, who betrayed the mujaheddin after they trusted them." It vowed to find and behead the killers, described as "followers of the occupiers."
At the Dulaimi family compound this week in the Abu Marie area of Ramadi, the slain colonel's father, Hamad Dulaimi, 73, sat on a bench as a group of children played in the yard. The surrounding streets and rooftops were crowded with armed men.
"These are the children of Sulaiman, who was killed by those bastards," he said.
The colonel's wife joined him: "Now we can talk, because we got revenge."
"If I didn't know that my son was innocent, I wouldn't have sent his cousins for revenge," the father said. "But for we Arabs, the matter of revenge is like honor. Both are the same for us."
As for Zarqawi's promise to retaliate, he said: "We got our revenge, and we have our precautions. Let them do as they like."
