Mutilated and killed, Iraqi boy is sectarian victim:

By Michael Georgy

05/23/06 -- - BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad's sectarian hit squads don't spare the young.

The family of 12-year-old Hani Saadoun has been traumatized by that reality since his tortured body, mutilated by electric drills, was found on Tuesday. They had been in a state of fear since he failed to return home for lunch a day earlier.

It seems gunmen in three cars cornered him as he headed to work, helping out at his father's parking lot, Interior Ministry sources and relatives said.

The Shi'ite family starting panicking when he had not turned up by Monday evening. By the time they learned of his fate on Tuesday he was just another statistic in Iraq's packed morgues.

The sense of loss mixed with shock as details of his brutal ordeal, shared by many dozens every day, became clear.

Saadoun's body was found dumped in southern Baghdad's violent, mostly Sunni Arab, district of Dora. It bore the hallmarks of sectarian tit-for-tat killings that have exploded since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February.

The youngster, with a bullet hole in his head and another through the chest, was blindfold and his hands bound. He had been whipped with cables, tormented by electric drills and his body dragged through the streets behind a car.

There was no way of ruling out other possible reasons for his death. He could have been the victim of one of Iraq's bloody tribal feuds or criminal gangs. But one conclusion predominates in a country becoming familiar with corpses dumped by the road.

"This was definitely a sectarian killing," the boy's uncle, a television cameraman well known among Baghdad journalists, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

"Witnesses told us that gunmen in three Opel cars grabbed him at a checkpoint. We know he was tortured and we know they dragged him through the streets by a rope and dumped him."

NEW RUTHLESSNESS?

While thousands of young children have been kidnapped for ransom or blown up in bombings, few appear yet to have been caught up in planned tit-for-tat sectarian abductions and killings that have been described as a dirty war.

If Saadoun's death was a sectarian slaying, it raises the possibility of a new level of ruthlessness.

It was also appalling bad luck. On a day off from school, eager to earn some pocket money, he set off to work at his father's lot. Normally his father or older brothers would have gone with him but, for the first time, they had pressing business at home and the youngster set off alone.

That cruel combination of circumstances may haunt his loved ones forever, another Iraqi family still waiting for their leaders to deliver on promises of stability.

At Saadoun's funeral, women in traditional black Shi'ite shawls wailed as his mother Fatima Oraybi stared up at his crude wooden coffin on the roof of a car.

"Oh my son," she cried.

Others could not understand why he was targeted. Drilling victims of kidnappings and killings is not unusual in Iraq but the torture of such a young boy left his relatives shocked.

"What did he do? He was 12. He was not a general or a minister," said his cousin Amir Mohammad.

New tough talking Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed to use maximum force to crush the men of violence. But his security forces can be hesitant. Saadoun's uncle said police and troops refused to help recover the body because Dora was too dangerous.

"His father had to round up relatives and people from the neighborhood to get the body," he said. "He had nothing to do with sectarianism or politics. He was just a boy."

(Additional reporting by Lutfi Abu Oun, editing by Dominic Evans)

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