Iraqi pilot buried at Arlington cemetery
Airman buried with four Americans is first Iraqi interred
Saturday, August 13, 2005; Posted: 10:05 p.m. EDT (02:05 GMT)
A U.S. airman carries an Iraqi flag next to a cassion carrying the remains of an Iraqi pilot and four U.S. airmen.
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ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) -- An Iraqi pilot and four U.S. airmen were together aboard an Iraqi Air Force plane when it crashed in May. Their remains were buried together this week in Arlington National Cemetery.
Iraqi Air Force Capt. Ali Hussam Abass Alrubaeye, 34, was the first Iraqi ever buried at the United States' premiere military cemetery.
"This will signify that these warriors were training together, they went into battle together, they died together and it's only proper that they be buried together," Lt. Gen. Michael Wooley, commander of the Air Force's Special Operations Command, said before the service.
A silver casket covered with an American flag contained Abass' remains as well as those of Maj. William Downs, 40, of Winchester, Virginia; Capt. Jeremy Fresques, 26, of Clarkdale, Arizona; Capt. Derek Argel, 28, of Lompoc, California, and Staff Sgt. Casey Crate, 26, of Spanaway, Washington.
Even after resorting to DNA tests, officials were unable to identify some remains of the five men killed May 30 when their single-engine plane crashed in eastern Diyala province. Separate funerals with remains that could be identified were held earlier by each of the airmen's families. The four had been assigned to Hurlburt Field, Florida.
Iraqi Air Force Capt. Ali Hussam Abass Alrubaeye
The unidentified remains were buried with full military honors, including the presentation of Iraqi flags to Abass' parents and widow by Iraqi Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Kamal Abdul-Sattar Barzanjy. The 30-minute service included a procession by an Air Force band ahead of a caisson carrying the casket, a flyover and a 21-gun salute.
"It's the right thing to do," Tom Sherlock, the cemetery's historian, said of the group burial. "This person was shoulder-to-shoulder with American airmen."
The crash is still under investigation but is not believed to have been the result of hostile fire, Wooley said. The six-seat Iraqi Air Force Comp Air 7 SL aircraft had been on a mission to survey potential emergency landing sites in the region.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Alton Phillips, who served with Abass in Iraq this spring, said the captain would have wanted his death to be part of efforts to bring about positive change in Iraq.
"He was very dedicated about doing this mission, about getting the Iraqi Air Force, rebuilding it and making it viable," Phillips said in a telephone interview from Kirkuk, Iraq. "If anyone deserves such an honor, it is certainly Captain Abass."
Phillips said Abass was a quick thinker and displayed it when the two were forced to land on a dirt road 25 miles from Kirkuk after an engine failure. Fearing what might happen as the two men saw vehicles approaching the aircraft from both directions, Abass told Phillips to hide behind a nearby sand berm so he could deal with locals and allay any concerns.
"That he had the presence of mind to think of this and the courage to be willing to protect me, I thought that was absolutely incredible," Phillips said.
There have been eight group burials at Arlington involving 19 foreigners, according to Sherlock. There are 43 individual foreigners also buried there, he said.
In 2002 the unidentified remains of three Americans and seven South Vietnamese soldiers were buried following the discovery in 1990 of a helicopter crash site in Laos where the crew went down in 1968.
Thursday's burial brought the total number of people involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom buried at Arlington to 184.
A U.S. soldier was killed Saturday by a roadside bomb in west Baghdad, according to the U.S. military, bringing the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to 1,846 and the number of American troops killed in August to 47.
Web sites that estimate Iraqi military and police deaths based on government and media reports put the total at more than 2,800.