Compensation eludes many Iraqi families

Batul Abdul Hussein thought her son, Wesam Saleh, was one. On Feb. 13, 2007, as U.S. and Iraqi troops began enforcing a new security plan to quell violence in Iraq, the 25-year-old policeman left for his night shift. He never made it home alive.

As his patrol rounded a curve in southwest Baghdad, Hussein said, it came under fire from U.S. forces who mistook the armed Iraqis rolling toward them in the dark for possible insurgents. The Americans took the wounded Saleh to the U.S.-run hospital in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, but he died six days later, his mother said, showing photocopies of hospital records and his death certificate.

Now Hussein, a widow whose home is a threadbare room with a concrete floor off a trash-strewn alley, feels lost in a bureaucratic abyss as she tries to get compensation.

Iraq's Interior Ministry has denied Hussein so-called martyr payments because it says Saleh was killed by friendly fire rather than insurgents. It recommended she seek help from the United States.

A U.S. military judge advocate also rejected her claim. "There was no evidence that U.S. forces acted either negligently or wrongfully," says the denial letter, dated July 5 and signed by a U.S. Army captain.

Yet her son gave his life protecting Iraq, Hussein said.

"In all the books of God, if someone is killed even by accident, their family should be compensated," said Hussein, 57, clutching a pale pink folder containing documents about her son's case. On the walls of her home are framed photographs of Saleh, who joined the police force in 2006.

Saleh was unmarried, so he always offered to ride in the front vehicle of police convoys, where it is most dangerous, Hussein said. That's where he was when gunfire hit his patrol.

U.S. officials say the military strives to avoid civilian and friendly-fire casualties. They say intelligence and technology help alert forces to the presence of noncombatants during missions. They also rely on Iraqi security officials to notify them of Iraqi police and military patrols.

But errors and accidents occur, and the system for allotting compensation often fails.

About 60% of claims filed to the U.S. military in recent years, for losses that vary from wrecked cars to civilian lives, were rejected, according to military records. Of 7,103 Iraqi claims filed with the United States in fiscal 2007, 2,896 were approved for payment, and a total of $8.4 million was paid. The previous year, 9,257 claims were filed; 3,658 of them, totaling just over $13 million, were paid.