When Craig Hicks murdered the three Muslim students in North Carolina this month, there was an account told by the local police that looked like a tale. Nevertheless, there was some relief in it!

The preliminary account of the police said the crime was because a dispute over car parking. And thus the murderer went to the house of his neighbors killing three persons because of parking one car just if he was going to borrow some tools to repair his car.

The account of the police reminded me of the reports of the police in my country (called Kurdistan and still called by some politicians ‘North Iraq’), and the similar countries too. All those reports are enough, if you think seriously of using them in fiction, for you to gain the anger of your readers for undervaluing their intelligence.

Few years ago a young student and a journalist in Erbil wrote some articles in the internet. One of those articles was an imaginary one, with a pen-name, of himself being the husband of Mas’ud Barzani’s daughter and how, thus, he would live in luxury.

Sardasht, the writer, was threatened and he was expecting his end, which came when some men kidnapped him in front of his college and in front of the eyes of the policemen of the college. He was found then murdered in Mosul City. Hercule Poirot of Erbil had afterwards an account to convince us with: Sardasht was cooperating with a terrorist group, namely Ansar Al-Islam, and when he refused to continue cooperating with them, they kidnapped him in Erbil and took him to Mosul (passing through the check points full of asleep or drunk or dazed solders!). Of course Mr. Poirot did not mention that Sardasht was not pro-islamic, neither even a practicing Muslim.

Mr. Poirot had, later, another report about another crime committed in front of an office of ‘Islamic Group in Kurdistan’ in Erbil where some young men, working with the ruling party (they escaped leaving their car and their identity cards) attacked the guard then murdered him.

The camera of the office had its report showing them beating then killing the guard, so the police had nothing but to say the cause of the murder: They stopped the car in front of the office to go to a shop where they could buy some cakes and juice (not mentioning that no such shop was in the around) and they talked to the guard gently! And thus, like the police of North Carolina, our police took the speech of some criminals for granted.

And the third tale is from Sulaimania where there was a corruption case concerning lands, and some men were arrested, in which among them was the director of Sulaimania City and its surroundings. The director was, according to his wife, with high spirits and was sure of been released soon from his confinement. And depending on the fact that big influentials benefited from the lands, the director might think that there was nothing to be afraid of. But it seemed that those influentials had another plan, so our high-spirited director was found, to the people’s astonishment, dead in his cell.

Then it was the turn of the report-chefs. They said what everyone had to expect: “The late had committed suicide,” with an unexpected supplement, “And since he had no lethal object with him, he choked himself with the wire of the refrigerator in his cell.”

Of course if you have nothing, but a refrigerator, in your possession to kill yourself by, it would be easier for you to lift the refrigerator, as high as you could, and let it fall on your head, but rolling a short wire around your neck and waiting with patience until the refrigerator moves dragging you, or do not wait and you drag it, is something enough to make you retract your resolution!

Believing in that account would be somewhat like believing the police of North Carolina about the man picking up his pistol to “argue” some people about car parking, then saying to himself: “Why going back home empty-handed? Let me at least use my pistol.” Bang Bang Bang!