Source: http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/default.aspx
August 3, 2005
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An American journalist and author was found dead after being shot three times in the chest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a U.S. embassy official said on Wednesday.
Steven Vincent's death came four days after an opinion piece he wrote criticizing the rise of Shi'ite Islamist fundamentalism in Basra was published in The New York Times.
The embassy official told Reuters his next of kin had been notified and an investigation was under way to determine who carried out the killing.
Vincent's body was found on Tuesday, officials said. A nurse in a Basra hospital said he had been shot three times in the chest.
His Iraqi translator, Nouriya Ita'is, was shot four times and is in serious condition, the nurse said.
Vincent was the author of a book on post-war Iraq and was researching another about the history of Basra, where British troops are based.
The New York Times opinion piece criticized the failure of British forces to clamp down on what Vincent described as a city that was "increasingly coming under the control of Shi'ite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream ... to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr."
Vincent was a freelance investigative journalist and art critic. A resident of New York City, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Harper's and the Christian Science Monitor.
A local Iraqi journalist who had worked with Vincent said he had spoken to several people in Basra while researching his book, including Iraqi officials and Christian residents.
Aside from a few attacks on British soldiers and Iraqi police, Iraq's second city Basra has been relatively free of the suicide bombings and assassinations gripping other parts of the country.
But residents say Shi'ite fundamentalists have been gaining control over the city since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
Christian alcohol sellers have been threatened and their shops damaged, residents say.
Sadr, who staged two violent uprisings against U.S. troops, is one of the Shi'ite clerics with followers and influence in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad.
Iraq has faced growing sectarian violence since January elections empowered Shi'ites for the first time and sidelined Arab Sunnis dominant under Saddam Hussein.
