Last month, townspeople say, tribal leaders gave a farmer named Salim Khaldoun a sobering choice: Kill your son, or watch your entire family be killed.
His son Sabah, 29, had committed a terrible crime. Eager for money, he had tipped off the Americans to a house where he said Saddam Hussein had stayed.
US soldiers raided the house, finding no trace of Saddam but killing a 12-year-old boy. Sabah, neighbours say, accompanied the soldiers on the raid. His face was covered with a sack, but they recognised him easily.
�Sabah also gave information about former intelligence and military officers,� neighbour Ahmed Ibrahim confided.
�He did it for money.�
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Standing at the gate of Sabah's house, a teenaged relative confirmed that Salim Khaldoun had killed his son.
He said US soldiers came looking for Khaldoun last week but didn't find him.
The family itself offered a cold reception in the house.
Khaldoun's brother said he didn't want to discuss the incident, because �the Sabah incident� had brought enough trouble to the family.
He said he preferred to discuss the difficulties of postwar life in rural Iraq, especially the electricity cutoffs that leave farmers unable to pump water from the nearby Tigris river into their orchards.
�Our dying trees,� he said, �are more important than the dead Sabah.�
Jordan Times August 10, 2003
