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Young Lawyer Dies in Iraq

Here is an example of the very best in lawyering - from an article from The Daily Oklahoman. Fern Leona Holland, dead at 33, was a graduate from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Tulsa Law School. She worked for a prestigious Tulsa law firm and set up legal clinics in Guinea and Iraq to work for women's rights. Her's was a life well-lived. We're sorry we didn't know her.

Fern Leona Holland, 33, was killed as she traveled near the town of Hillah. Holland, along with another civilian and a translator, were stopped at a checkpoint where they were shot by gunmen posing as Iraqi police, a military source said. Holland's family said she was the leader of Iraq's women's rights movement, a brilliant woman who loved democracy. "She believed in freedom," said her sister Vi Holland of Oklahoma City. "She believed that every man and woman born should enjoy the right of freedom."

Fern Holland had been working in Iraq as a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority. She was investigating human rights violations, setting up women's rights conferences and assisting with the new constitution.

After Guinea, the U.S. hired her to set up women's clinics in Iraq.

Holland set up women's centers across Iraq and organized a trip in October for a group of Iraqi women to travel to the United States and meet President Bush...."She wasn't military, she wasn't a soldier," [a former partner] said. "She was over there working for human rights, and because of that, those people assassinated her."

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