BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 8 - This alone seems certain about the killing of the American freelance journalist Steven Vincent: about 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 2, he and his Iraqi interpreter, Nooriya Taiz, were dragged by several armed men into a government pickup truck on a busy commercial street in the southern city of Basra, and found several hours later, riddled with bullets. Ms. Taiz survived.
The attack, the first since the invasion in which an American journalist in Iraq was killed, has been the subject of investigations by the F.B.I. and the Iraqi police, who have made no official comments.
On Sept. 19, Fakher Haider, 38, an Iraqi journalist working for The New York Times, was murdered under similarly mysterious circumstances and his killers also remain at large. Radical Shiite militias, who have infiltrated the government and police force in Basra, are widely suspected of committing the crimes, though it is not known whether the killings are linked in any way.
The two killings have quieted all but the most private conversations about the people who may have committed them. Shortly before Mr. Haider's death, however, The Times spent a week in Basra investigating Mr. Vincent's death and found in his killing a reflection of the climate of violence, rapacious politics and dread that has in recent months throttled the city.
more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/international/middleeast/09vincent.ready.html
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