From The Age, with thanks to Nicolei:
Amar was 19, but he had the mind of a four-year-old. This handicap didn’t stop the insurgency’s hard men as they strapped explosives to his chest and guided him to a voting centre in suburban Al-Askan.
And before yesterday’s sunrise in Baghdad, his grieving parents loaded his broken remains on the roof of a taxi to lead a sorrowful procession to the holy city of Najaf. There, they gave him a ceremonial wash, shrouded him in white cotton and buried him next to the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of their Shiite creed….
He had Down syndrome or, as the Iraqis say, he’s a mongoli, and when his parents, Ahmed, 42, and Fatima, 40, went to vote with their two daughters Amar was left in the family home.
They presume that in their absence he set out to fill his day as he always did – wandering the streets of the neighbourhood until, usually, a friend or neighbour would bring him home around dusk….
“He was mindless, but he was mostly happy, laughing and playing with the children in the street. Now, his father is inconsolable; his mother cries all the time,” the teacher said.
After voting at 7.30am, Amar’s parents joined their extended family for a celebration that became a lunch of chicken and rice, soup and orange juice, at the home of a relative.
The sound of the explosion interrupted the party. But, the cousin said, it was assumed to be a mortar shell, a follow-up to the barrage across the city in the first hours of voting.
“Everyone was very happy and excited, but news came that a mongoli had been a bomber. Ahmed and Fatima became distressed and they raced home. They got neighbours to search and one of them identified Amar’s head where it lay on the pavement and his body was broken into pieces.
“I have heard of them using dead people and donkeys and dogs to hide their bombs, but how could they do this to a boy like Amar?”
Apparently, Amar triggered the bomb before he got to the intended target. It exploded while he was crossing open ground.