April 29, 2005
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Karim Kadim/Associated Press
Gunmen shot and killed Sheikha Lamea Khaddouri, a member of the Iraqi assembly, outside her house today in eastern Baghdad.
April 28, 2005
Gunmen in Baghdad Kill National Assembly Member
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 27 – Three men with pistols shot to death an Iraqi legislator on Wednesday at the front gate of her eastern Baghdad home in a brazen daylight attack, the Iraqi police and the victim’s neighbors and family said. It was the first assassination of a National Assembly member since the elections on Jan. 30.
The legislator, Sheikha Lameah Khaddouri al-Sakri, was a member of departing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s party and a high-profile human rights activist. She was shot down about 3:30 p.m. in the Shiite neighborhood of Binouk, where she lived with her brothers in a modest home amid olive trees set back from a wide street.
Ms. Khaddouri, one of 87 women in the 275-member Assembly, had survived two previous assassination attempts, one when she was fired upon as she was parking in a garage, and another when gunmen attacked her as she was driving in the capital, destroying her car. She had moved from house to house in Baghdad in an effort to head off further attacks.
Just last week, Dr. Allawi himself escaped a car-bomb assassination attempt that killed two policemen.
A friend of Ms. Khaddouri’s said she had been singled out because of her outspokenness.
“They chose her as a target because she spoke out and took little care who she criticized,” said Haifa el-Azawi, who is also a member of the National Assembly. “She was a brave woman, and she was talking a lot about the situation.”
Ms. Azawi said Ms. Khaddouri’s friends had told her that her bodyguards were too young and that she needed better protection.
On Wednesday, according to the accounts of a bodyguard and one of her neighbors, Ms. Khaddouri had just been dropped off at the driveway that leads to her front gate. She walked through the five-foot-tall black iron gate and closed it behind her. As she made her way to her front door, three pistol-wielding men got out of a maroon Opel Omega sedan and knocked on the gate. One called to her by name.
“They knocked at her gate, and she went back to open it, and then she got shot directly,” said First Lt. Sabah Sahr, from Al Quds police station. “One of the men called her by her name.” Ms. Khaddouri suffered eight bullet wounds to her face and chest, he said.
Ms. Khaddouri’s bodyguard, interviewed later at the police station, said he had driven his car away after dropping Ms. Khaddouri off. He said that he soon heard gunfire, but that he did not think Ms. Khaddouri could have been the target because she should have been safe on her own property. In the interview, the bodyguard, who would not give his name, said she might have thought he was calling out to her.
Earlier in the day Ms. Khaddouri was interviewed on television, said her brother, Amar abd al-Khaddouri, a dentist. “She was always afraid to be on TV,” he said.
According to the bodyguard, after she had finished the interview, she said, “I’m afraid they will kill me because I’ve been on TV.”
Ms. Khaddouri, who was unmarried and in her 40′s, shunned living in the relatively protected Green Zone, where some of the other legislators live, in favor of sharing a home with her brothers.
She was given the honorific of Sheikha because she was the daughter of a prominent Shiite leader of the Rabiya tribe, which is based in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. She had only recently begun using security guards paid for by her family, according to her brother.
One neighbor, a 17-year-old who would identify himself only as Husam, said, “When she was elected to Parliament, I said, ‘Why don’t you have better security?’ And she said, ‘God will protect me.’ “
Layla Istifan and Khalid Hassan contributed reporting for this article.
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