Reporter Finds U.S. Sniper Who Shot Knight Ridder Correspondent in Iraq

One of the most remarkable stories of the Iraq war appears today at the online magazine Salon, written by its longtime foreign correspondent Phillip Robertson. Amazingly, he managed this month to track down the American sniper who apparently shot and killed Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee, 33, on June 24. The article, "The Victim and the Killer," chronicles this search, and lengthy exchanges between Robertson and the sniper, described only as "Joe."

E&P has covered the Salihee incident from the start, first with a news report, then a moving tribute to him written by Knight Ridder's Baghdad chief Hannah Allam, which drew wide reader response. Salihee, a physican who had worked for KR for more than a year, was accidentally shot, on his day off, while driving his car in what seemed like a haphazard manner, wrongly suspected by American soldiers of being a suicide bomber.

Robertson, who had met Salihee, decided to search for the unidentified sniper himself. This seemed like a long shot, at best, as the U.S. military won't comment on civilian casualties in general, let alone in particular, and certainly not put any journalist in contact with a suspected shooter. But this did not stop Robertson, who has filed dozens of stories from Iraq and Afghanistan for Salon since 2001.

Steve Butler, Knight Ridder's foreign editor, who said he read Salon story today "very carefully," told E&P: "We've been talking to the military in Baghdad and they are preparing an investigation. We would like the report of that investigation to be made public. It could be that this interview with the sniper is the only record we will have."

Just about all Robertson knew at the start was that at least four rounds had been fired at Salihee on June 24, some of them perhaps warning shots (though eyewitnesses dispute this), with one of them piercing his skull and killing him instantly. Salihee left behind a wife and 2-year-old daughter, as well as grieving colleagues at Knight Ridder.

To find the shooter, Robertson requested an embed slot in western Baghdad. (Butler, the Knight Ridder editor, told E&P that "it bothers me somewhat" that Robertson was "not being totally honest... embedding with the military with the purpose of doing his own investigation into this.") Two weeks later, he was able to find the unit, part of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, that took part in the fatal shooting.