The latest sensation in the online world is the letter recently published on the Iraqi blog Healing Iraq, about a missing young man named Zaydun Ma'mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai.  The letter, purportedly written by Zaydun's mother, describes his murder by drowning at the hands of US soldiers, as related by a cousin who was with him and "survived miraculously". 

If it hadn't been for a single phrase of Zeyad's, it would be easy to dismiss this letter instantly as something fabricated by anti-Coalition forces due to the many details that don't make sense, even if you're able to assume (an easy task for anti-Americans, of course) that somehow, an entire patrol consisted solely of "bad apples" who would commit deliberate murder.  Stop drooling, Oliver Stone, we haven't gone over the details yet.

But Zeyad said, "Zaydun is a relative of mine". Therefore, since Zeyad has always proved a credible source in the past, I believe that Zaydun exists. 

Something official must be done to determine the veracity of this account. More than likely, the account of Zaydun's cousin as to the fate of Zaydun is false. It's as full of holes as Swiss cheese. I'm not even certain the letter was written by Zaydun's mother.  Zeyad himself says, "I never implied that I was 100% convinced about the details. They were really really troubled when I talked to them and they just handed me the letter and the picture and asked me to do whatever I can do about it."

The writer of the letter takes great pains to induce pathos as well as anger at the US, describing Iraq as "a country torn by wars and sanctions", and saying of herself, "I was a victim, and there are and will be many more".  If that seems a little overdone, the writer continues to speak of the "suffering of Iraqi mothers, we are reaping misery every day from actions of American soldiers with no regard to our human life, our dignity, and our culture and values". 

So, is this a letter about a missing young man, or a general diatribe against the US and the Coalition?  "The devil is in the details", they say.

The story told by the unnamed cousin was that the soldiers caught him and Zaydun returning to Samarra after the curfew, when their cargo truck broke down. After searching the truck, they tied both men up.  They abandoned their post to lead the men to a dam three kilometers (a little less than 2 miles) away, where they made them jump into the water.  The cousin's account tells that he got lucky, and was caught by a tree branch and escaped. The cousin says he tried to save Zaydun, but the water was too strong.  He hid when he saw the soldiers searching for them with flashlights.  

Zaydun and his cousin took their work truck and went somewhere, returning at night -- the letter specifies midnight -- with something in it that made soldiers at the checkpoint place them under arrest when they searched it. What was in the truck? Did Zaydun and the cousin actually escape? Did they run to the river to hide, chased by a few of the soldiers with flashlights?  Did Zaydun, perhaps while removing his jacket to change his appearance, fall into the fast-moving water beneath the dam?  Did the cousin indeed try to save him, only to be defeated by the fast-moving water?

The letter goes on to say, "After days of search we found my sons jacket floating with the stream".  If the current was so strong that two young men couldn't fight it, how far did the jacket travel over the course of days?  And how did Zaydun remove it, if he was tied up?  In an update, Zeyad tells us the cousin later stated that the handcuffs were removed before the men were told to jump into the water. However, anyone that has seen a television in the last year has seen Coalition troops arresting people with the use of plastic zip-strips, not handcuffs. Perhaps it's another translation error or omission, which is all the more reason to have the matter investigated.  

It's the last part of the story about the jacket in which the hard play for sympathy combined with hatred for America rings most false... "it shall remain with me as a memory and a symbol of the injustice brought against him by soldiers of the United States of America's army, who came to our country under the banners of human rights and democracy only to send my son to his demise on his wedding days." (Emphasis mine)  "Ahh, those bastards!" we are supposed to say at this point. The reference to it being his actual wedding day was later explained as a translation error on Zeyad's part, but the reference is still obvious: the beginning of the letter tells us that Zaydun was "engaged to marry a relative of his very recently".