Tuesday, July 22, 2003

IT IS NOT ONE WORLD.

Former prisoner, released as Saddam bails, shoots soldiers and sells kidneys for cash.
After more than a week of investigation, a tip came in from a young man who claimed his uncle, Gubashi, had been drinking and started bragging about the shooting. The tip came shortly after Ambassador L. Paul Bremer announced reward money would be offered to informants whose tips led to the capture of anybody who killed or tried to kill coalition troops.

The young man gave Army investigators his uncle's name and detailed how Gubashi had agreed to kill an American for cash as part of a contracted assassination for the Fedayeen who provided Gubashi with the weapon.

From the time Sherman's soldiers learned of Gubashi, he looked like a good suspect. He had spent most of his adult life in an Iraqi prison, for murder, until he was released in January when Saddam Hussein emptied Iraq's prisons by pardoning all criminals.

While the reward money helped motivate the young man to tip off authorities, he later told investigators he hated Gubashi because he had frequently beat him when a child and when his father had died Gubashi had forced his mother into another marriage with a man the informant didn't like. The nephew gave soldiers the location of the house in a small town about 20 miles north of Baghdad where Gubashi had been since shortly after the shooting...

...Upon their return, relatives were quick to share news they had seen Gubashi. They said he had already spent all the money he received for shooting Pecotte. Short of cash and on the run, Gubashi had turned to Iraq's organ black market, agreeing to sell one of his kidneys at a Baghdad hospital for $30,000. The money, a huge amount in Iraq, would have enabled Gubashi to flee the country or hole up somewhere for years.

A half dozen soldiers quickly went to the hospital identified by relatives. When they got there hospital administrators initially denied Gubashi was one of their patients. But when an Army interpreter found Gubashi's name on an admissions roster and the kidney recipient turned up at the hospital, the soldiers knew they were on a hot trail.

They waited only about 15 minutes when Gubashi showed up to see a doctor and a trio of soldiers grabbed him up without incident. It turned out the soldiers had beaten Gubashi to the hospital. As they were leaving with their prisoner, one of the soldiers was stopped by a doctor who had a question. If it was not too much trouble, the doctor inquired, after Gubashi was executed, could the hospital please have both his kidneys?

It is a good, if gruesome story. Read it all here.

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