are available at
http://www.cpt.org/iraq/action_alerts/SumaidaieTestimony.htm in a report apparently prepared by the ambassador:
Military units made up of American Marines and Iraqi Army units were conducting house to house raids presumably looking for weapons and terrorists. At around ten o'clock in the morning, they knocked on the door of Abdul-Hadi Al-Sumaida'ie's house. It was already warm outside and the family (the mother and her four sons and three sisters) was assembled in the living room (referred to as the hall). The father Abdul-Hadi who is the local school headmaster, was at the school. Mohammed rushed to open the front door, and it was a group of American Marines. He greeted them pleasantly, happy to exercise some of his English. About ten marines accompanied by an interpreter – apparently Egyptian - trooped in. They asked Mohammed if there were any weapons in the house. Mohammed replied: Yes, only one rifle which belonged to the school in the old days. It has no live ammunition; only some blanks. He led some of the marines into his father's bedroom where the rifle was, while the others dispersed in the house and some went up to mount the flat roof . The rest of the family was kept in the hall.
A short time after going into the bedroom a thud was heard. Mohammed's younger sister asked: “What is that?” Her mother said “Something must have fallen down”. The mood of the family was generally relaxed and assured as they had nothing to hide and, as they thought, nothing to fear.
Ali, Mohammed's younger brother was dragged by the hair by a marine into the corridor leading to the bedroom and was beaten. The Marine was shouting at him in English, and Ali kept saying: “No English”, and then broke down crying and fell to the ground. The mother started sobbing.
While the family was waiting, there was a lot of toing and froing. At one stage a Marine went out and came back with a camera, and went into the bedroom.
After a while, the family was told to go out of the house and wait outside in the porch, which they did. More than one hour later, the soldiers left. As they were going they took the mother with them outside the house. She was barefoot. The interpreter asked her, in Arabic:
“Was that your son, in there?”
“Yes”, she said.
“They killed him!”
She cried in disbelieve “You mean he is dead?”
“Yes, he is dead”.
And turned to leave.
The mother let off a deafening cry of anguish, but the Marines were smiling at each other as they were leaving.
In the bedroom, Mohammed was found dead and laying in a clotted pool of his blood. A single bullet had penetrated his neck. A “Yashmagh” or Koffiyeh (the red and white Arab head-dress) had been taken off the coat hanger and dropped into the pool and a pair of dark gloves were taken from the cupboard and placed on his chest. They marines had taken the old rifle with them.
(...continues...)
(On edit: story also covered by BBC at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4643481.stm which quotes from and uses the same testimony quoted above.)
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