Ali Karim Abbas

From the news reports:

Ali Karim Abbas was eager for a new Iraq.

Despite being in frail health, the veteran police officer worked with U.S. soldiers to improve security in this rural zone south of Baghdad and was named chief of police this month. "He always wanted to do the right thing," said 1st Sgt. Terry Schneider of the 82nd Airborne Division. ...

Abbas, a Shiite Muslim, was a native of Mahmudiyah, a large town just north of here. He was one of nine brothers and sisters born to a working-class family that made its living in the town's sprawling market.

Abbas served as a police officer for 35 years, rising to lieutenant colonel and serving in Baghdad and throughout the country. But, relatives say, he refused to join Hussein's Baath Party until he was forced to and stayed a low-level, nominal member.

"He remained a clean man, never defiled by the dirt of the old regime," said his brother-in-law, Saad Abdul Amir, 38, a headmaster ...

A survivor of two heart attacks, Abbas directed his energy to fixing the 45-man department's many shortcomings after his promotion to chief. ...

Abbas worked closely with the 82nd Airborne, which occupies this zone on the southern fringe of the so-called Sunni Triangle, a district active with anti-coalition cells. Quickly, Abbas and Schneider, a native of Florida, became close comrades. ...

"My brother was a man of peace," said Mohammed Karim Abbas, a 45-year-old merchant who was still in shock about his older brother's killing and worried about the future of his sibling's eight children, two of them developmentally disabled. ...

he was an honest man

LAT 26 Nov 2003