"In the document, written a dozen days after the shootout, Alston requests more
information from U.S. authorities about the Ishaqi episode. From his
investigation, which is not described in detail, Alston concluded that, at the
end of the shootout, the "troops entered the house, handcuffed all the residents
and executed all of them." When Schofield followed up for this week's
story, the U.N. official told him that he had been frustrated in 2006 when he
tried to get more information from American and Iraqi officials. Alston, now a
law professor at NYU,
said the U.N. Human Rights Council did not have the power or will to respond
when requests were ignored. Schofield's reporting has
been corroborated and a big story revived. But there is no joy in it for the
journalist. He felt sickened back then at the thought that young Americans could
have visited such horror on women and small children. He stayed up late into the
night after writing the story to talk through the story with colleagues, they
still recall."