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IRBIL,
Iraq - Shihab Khaled Anwar cannot bear to think
of his father, beheaded in Iraq for allegedly being
an informant for Americans.
"If I think of him, I picture his head and I won't
be able to sleep," the 10-year-old boy said.
The severed head was dumped on the pavement near his
home in the northern city of Mosul a day after his
father, Khaled Ibrahim, 29, was abducted by gunmen
on his way to buy bread.
Shihab, too young to grasp the motives behind such
brutality, refers to his father's killers as
"burglars." The adults in the family have a
different theory: he was tipping off the Americans
about "terrorists."
Now the family feels abandoned by America, for whom
Ibrahim sacrificed his life.
The U.S. military in Iraq never comments on its
network of informants, past or present. But the
beheading of Ibrahim indicates his death was the
work of Iraqi insurgents, who have made decapitation
the gruesome signature of their campaign against
foreigners and Iraqi collaborators, often filming
the act and distributing it on Web sites.
According to his wife, Ibrahim started off as a
friend to Americans. They would visit the couple's
home, and the Ibrahims would offer them food and
drink. At some point the Americans, whom Mrs.
Ibrahim did not identify, asked him to work for
them.
Ibrahim was certainly qualified to help the
Americans. He knew Mosul well and he was a Kurd.
Kurds were persecuted under Saddam Hussein and
supported the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled his
regime.
From that point on, Ibrahim had regular contacts
with Americans, said his wife, an Arab.
"Every week or two he went to see the Americans,"
she said. "He identified people who put explosives,
the terrorists. He liked the Americans. He was
against the situation."
She said the night before his death Ibrahim told her
he sensed he was being watched. It was no surprise -
he had received many threats from Islamic extremists
for collaborating with the Americans.
The family's horror began at 7 a.m. on Sept. 5, when
Ibrahim left his home in the northern city of Mosul
with his 5-year-old son, Inad, to buy bread for
breakfast.
They had only driven a couple of blocks when two
cars blocked their path. Armed men dragged the
father out of his car, striking him on the head with
the rifle butt. Ibrahim fell unconscious to the
ground.
The attackers then poured kerosene on his car as
Inad sat inside. Just before lighting it, they
removed the child and left him on the pavement to
watch his father being driven away.
It was Inad who broke the news of his father's
abduction to the family.
"Burglars took daddy and ran away," Shihab recalls
his brother screaming as he burst into the house.
The next day, Ibrahim's head was found lying next to
the burned car. Anwar Ibrahim, the victim's father,
and his brother-in-law went to retrieve it.
"We put it in a coffin and took it away," said Anwar
Ibrahim. "What else could we do?"
Ibrahim's wife was pregnant at the time. On Dec. 28,
she gave birth to a fifth son.
She says the Americans have not offered the family
any financial assistance; they have not even visited
them to pay their respects.
Mrs. Ibrahim and her sons now live with Ibrahim's
family in Irbil, in the Kurdish self-ruled region of
northern Iraq.
Anwar Ibrahim, 65, works as a concierge in a
university dormitory and makes about $250 a month.
He complains it is not enough to make ends meet.
"There's no government. Nobody's helping us or
telling us who did it. I'm a guard here trying to
make money to support his five boys," the elder
Ibrahim said.
The family has asked officials at the Kurdistan
Democratic Party, one of two major Kurdish parties,
for help but was told the case did not concern them.
"The Americans should help us. He died because of
them," said Khaled's widow. "I want my children to
have normal lives when they grow up."
Shihab suffers quietly, trying to make sense of his
loss.
"I'm angry for what happened to my father," he said.
"I don't know who did it. I think they were thieves.
They were in two cars, there too many of them. They
carried knives, a Kalashnikov and pistols."
© 2005 AP. All rights reserved.
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