Iraqi victims of Saddam Hussein deserve justice, as a free people, with free will, and under their own sovereign law.
Linking this thread to the series.
The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 6 - Agence France-Presse, Toronto Star, The Australian +
~*~ "There is nothing in this tunnel, save for rats and sodden fruit crates. But across town, at another portal to the subterranean maze, a morsel of information has floated to the surface. It's a piece of paper, part of a security file. It reads: 'Ali Shankat. Executed criminal. Accused of writing about Saddam Hussein.'" ~*~ The relatives push forward, waving their faded pictures, in much the same way that desperate kinfolk had wandered around the ruins of the World Trade Center towers after 9/11, seeking information about their missing. Haid Ahmed holds up a photograph of his brother, Moayed, an agriculture student who disappeared in June, 1981. 'We haven't been able to search for him until now. We were too scared even to try.' Too scared, in the Saddam days, to even inquire about Moayed's fate. ~*~ The Age (Melbourne) "'Among them here are children of ages less than three - what was their guilt that they should be murdered?' Mr Amin said. 'Just because they were Kurds? Among them are old women with no teeth. What harm could they do? Saddam Hussein was nothing but a dictator and a killer.' ~*~ The Australian "Desperate relatives and friends were digging to find remains of their loved ones yesterday at what US soldiers said was the largest mass grave of Saddam Hussein's victims discovered in Iraq. ... Seven days into the dig, the scene resembles a battlefield of the dead: the loose sandy soil carved into trenches, ditches and foxholes by a bulldozer. All around lie piles of remains: pelvic bones, ribs, femurs and skulls -- one still wearing its weave-pattern prayer cap, another the blindfold affixed by his killers shortly before death. From many protrude the identity cards, amber necklaces, front-door keys and watches used by relatives to identify their brothers, cousins and sons. A plastic artificial leg sticks out of one pile, two crutches from another." ~*~ "On an exhumed mound beside the most westerly row of corpses, Ali Abdul Hassan Mekki, 50, sat with a plastic bag between his feet. Thirteen years ago his brother, Jaffar, disappeared during Hussein's post-rebellion slaughter. It was, for him, the worst possible outcome -- misery without certainty. 'I think this is my brother,' he said. 'This is my pullover, which he always borrowed from me to wear, but it is not enough to identify him. The problem is that I don't recognise this wallet and the identity card does not have any writing on it.'" ~*~ They wandered the abandoned corridors of one of the most frightening buildings in the Middle East searching for their brothers, desperately trying to ignore the logic that told them there was little hope of finding them alive. Other searchers were lifting trapdoors and banging pipes and marble tiles trying to find the underground cells reputed to hold hundreds of political prisoners under the ominous headquarters building..." ~*~ Sydney Morning Herald General Jawdat al-Obeidi, the proclaimed deputy head of the Baghdad provisional government, said that about 150 political prisoners were found by US troops in a secret prison in Salman Pak, 35 kilometres south of Baghdad, and another 200 were rescued at a spot he refused to name. In Kadhimiya, a primarily Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad, 25 people were discovered in an underground prison, he said. ~*~
Foreign Free Press
"They are the missing, probably long dead and thus mercifully released from their misery. But hope lives on, however atrophied and threadbare. It is this hopeful longing for miracles that brings Iraqis, in their pleading numbers, to every portal, hatchway and unsealed vent hole, in search of loved ones. 'My brother,' says one. 'My son,' implores another."
-- Toronto Star, April 21, 2003
-- Report on Iraqi Prisons in the Toronto Star, April 21, 2003
"'My brother could be anywhere. This is just a possibility. But any place I hear there is a prison, I go there. I have been to four prisons already. I am going to keep looking because my father and mother have asked me to. We have talked about him every day since he was taken. His life inside prison is now longer than his life outside. In my heart, I think he is alive, but only God knows.'"
-- Toronto Star, April 21, 2003
"Sunni Arab villager Ali Ibrahim said his friend Khalil Eid, then a 14-year-old shepherd, was one of the few local people to have had first-hand experience of the massacre. 'One day he came to this place with his sheep and some army vehicles came, and they told him to go far away because there would be shooting practice here,' Mr Ibrahim said. 'He went far off into the desert but later he sneaked back and heard the sound of firing and people screaming.' After the forces had driven away he came and saw they had leveled the ground. It's a disaster. It's a crime that cannot be described."
-- The Age (Melbourne), July 17, 2003
-- The Australian, May 15, 2003
-- The Australian, May 15, 2003
-- The Australian, April 13, 2003
"'Before Baghdad fell, the guards let water flow into the cells to kill the prisoners before they themselves fled. But the prisoners were smart and built ramps to climb on top of. That's why they didn't drown.'"
-- Sydney Morning Herald, April 22, 2003
"A single intelligence man carrying a machine gun positioned himself inside the horseshoe. The prisoners wept and cried out the Muslim prayer before death: there is no god but God.
"The gunfire began. The shooter pivoted, according to the account provided to Mr. Abu Musab, using the horseshoe formation to make the executions quicker. Formation after formation was brought forward until all were dead. All were men, save one."
-- Agence France-Presse, May 17, 2003
~*~
"Contrary to what has been written, Uday was never married and he was obsessed with women. If he spotted a woman he fancied in the street or at a reception, he would send his henchmen to fetch her."
-- Uday's former aide, Agence France Presse, July 22, 2003
~*~
"At Baghdad's teeming Al-Mutanabi book market, Ali al-Saadi held up a gilded Islamist book and recalled the one he said led to his torture in one of Saddam Hussein's military prisons. 'When I was a literature student in 1982, intelligence officers found a book by Mohammed Sadeq Sadr in my house,' said Saadi of the Shiite ayatollah whose 1999 murder was widely attributed to Saddam's Sunni-majority regime. 'They accused me of organizing a political group. I spent three years in jail and suffered a lot,' he said, showing scars on his wrists from prison chains and gaps where he said three teeth had been pulled out with pliers. Saadi was just one of many writers and thinkers at the weekly market who celebrated being able to buy and sell books that were illegal under the old regime."
-- Agence France-Presse, May 9, 2003
~*~
The writers who praised Saddam would get treated well. The members of the Baath party were always watching the others. There were always security members at my plays and sometimes they (the plays) were not allowed,' said [Aziz Abdul] Sahib. Sahib said he had been selling his writings at a public market once a week 'just so I could eat.'"
-- Agence France-Presse, April 28, 2003
~*~
Poet Imad Kadhum...said he had been terrified that Baath members would inform on him and that several friends were arrested for offending Saddam, who was himself credited with penning several self-aggrandizing novels.
"'All the writers here refused Saddam Hussein and many were in trouble if we did not praise Saddam in our poetry or stories,' he said. 'We never accepted that we were criminals. If our work was disliked by Saddam or (eldest son) Uday, then we would be placed in jail.'
"'A lot of (writers) may have been killed, and to this day we don't know what has happened to them,' Kadhum said."
-- Agence France-Presse, April 28, 2003
~*~
"'There was a room painted in red in the Olympic Committee building where athletes were held in isolation for days on end,' said Sabat, who has a passing resemblance to the French football star Zinedine Zidane. 'We were all terrified of this room.' Iraq's state-sponsored sporting violence even extended to journalists who covered competitions and matches. One reporter, who said he preferred not to give his name because he was still afraid of 'Uday's men,' told AFP that such violence was widespread in the dark years of Saddam's 24-year rule. 'I was tortured because I'd criticised the government's sport policies,' he said. 'They took me to one of their special prisons. They blindfolded me and then tortured me with electricity.'"
-- Agence France-Presse, April 23, 2003
~*~
The friendly between Iraq and Kazakhstan ended in a 2-1 defeat for the home team. The Iraqi footballers had flunked a crucial penalty, and they dreaded what Uday Saddam Hussein had in store for them after the final whistle.
"Ahmed Sabat, considered one of the most talented Iraqi soccer players of his generation, told the story of that fateful day six years ago.... 'It was a friendly but we'd lost, and we knew what would happen once the spectators left,' said the 27-year-old...."
'The players and the coach were made to lie down on the pitch,' he explained, 'and Uday's men came and beat us with sticks on our feet and on our backs and punched us to punish us.' 'We suffered in silence. The psychological pressure on the players was enormous, especially when it came to penalties.'"
-- Agence France-Presse, April 23, 2003
~*~
"The civilians were hanged. Sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot. I could distinguish them by their uniforms. This grave belongs to a woman. She was hanged. There are another five cemeteries in Baghdad with secret gravesites so in this city alone there are about 6,000 (political) corpses."
-- Gravedigger at a Baghdad cemetery, Agence France-Presse, April 21, 2003
~*~ The Baath regime has gone and now we can talk freely with you. They [the corpses] are all political. Ten to 15 bodies would arrive at a time from the Abu Ghraib prison and we would bury them here. The last corpse interred was number 993." ~*~ See also: The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 1 - The New York Times The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 2 - The Washington Post The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 3 - USA Today, LA Times The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 4 - Newsweek, Time Magazines The inhumane reign of Saddam Hussein: Pt. 5 - The London Times + (UK free press) Coming soon: More American free press: AP, Newsday, ABC, CBS +...... ~*~
-- Mohymeed Aswad, manager of Baghdad cemetery, Agence France-Presse, April 21, 2003