Multiple car bombs killed seventy-one people throughout Iraq.
Wednesday 11 May
Joe Carr and Sheila Provencher visited Women's Will, an Iraqi Women's
organization that advocates for women's issues in Iraq. The founder stated her passion to unite Iraqi and American mothers in a common nonviolent struggle against the occupation and war. "It will be better for Iraqis and better for the American soldiers if [the soldiers] go home," she said.
Thursday 12 May
Provencher went to a wedding. She noted that the Baghdad neighborhood she was in during the wedding was filled with the noise of helicopters, tanks and gunfire. Her hosts told her that "the Americans" had target practice at a nearby military base. The family, who used to support the presence of American troops, no longer wanted them to be in Iraq and complained about the increase in violence.
While grocery shopping, Tom Fox came upon four Multinational Forces (MNF) Hummers and around eight foot soldiers (two squads.) The soldiers told Fox that they were doing house-to-house checks. When Fox asked why the soldiers were checking houses, the soldiers told him they received a list of streets to check, and they check houses on those streets. Some of the soldiers entered a nearby orphanage, which entertained the children.
Friday 13 May
Provencher visited a 27-year-old Iraqi friend who runs her own business. One of the employees at the shop said a rocket-propelled grenade seriously injured his father the previous day. His father's home is next to a police station. When the resistance targeted the police station, the grenade missed, flew into the home and took off the father's right leg. The employee broke down, saying, "As an Iraqi citizen I can no longer bear this situation. I have so many plans for my life . . . I want to go to graduate school, for instance. But I am afraid to even travel across the city because I might lose my hand, my leg, or my life. I cannot bear this anymore."
Sunday 15 May
En route to the U.S.A., Provencher left Iraq and arrived safely in Amman, Jordan. She told the team that the ten mile trip to the Baghdad airport took two hours because of all the U.S.-manned check points on the road.
16 May 2005
Rollins and Carr went to the office of an Iraqi nongovernmental organization (NGO) that has offered CPT meeting space and other assistance. They interviewed the brother of a man detained at Abu Ghraib by U.S. forces since November 2004. The detainee was working at a restaurant late one night when a car bomb exploded across the street. U.S. forces entered the restaurant and detained all five of the men working there. Since his incarceration in Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi man has come before a judge twice but both times the U.S. forces that detained him did not appear to testify against him.
Carr and one of the team's translators went to the residency office to fill out the necessary forms for his one-month stay in Iraq. Carr had to fulfill a completely different set of requirements than CPTer Kathleen O'Malley had to one month earlier.
When they returned from the residency office, the translator stayed to visit with the team. He mentioned that one of his relatives is a member of the Provisional Iraqi Assembly. The relative is so concerned for his own safety that he sleeps in a different relative's house each night and never sleeps in his own.