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To: quidnunc

I hope everyone reading this thread clicks the link to the whole article.

Here's the part before the woman and baby being killed - it is horrible, but what I find terrible is the US media not reporting these atrocities.

***Idrissi seems a bit callous about the fate of the Iraqis in US-run jails, he has probably earned the right to differ. He recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad:

"They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a 'celebration.' We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen."

"This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us."

"Amer's wife didn't lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer's throat." There is a moment of silence. Then Idrissi says: "What we have seen about the recent abuse at Abu Ghraib is a joke to us."

The Idrissis, and many families like them, feel that people in Iraq have too quickly relegated the horrors of the old regime to the annals of history. "But it is not the past to us," says Idrissi. "The mother of the person who was killed, his brothers and sisters, they are alive. We are still living the nightmare every day."


8 posted on 05/24/2004 12:02:05 PM PDT by little jeremiah ("Gay Marriage" - a Weapon of Mass. Destruction!)
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To: little jeremiah

Here's the very end of the article:

***The brothers hope to get compensation for the families, who have often lost all their belongings in addition to their loved ones. One day, they hope, the executioners will be put on trial. But most of all, they want recognition for what they, and thousands of others like them, have been through. And that people would stop saying "things were better under Saddam."

"Only criminals could say such a thing. The victims deserve better than this," Idrissi concludes.


9 posted on 05/24/2004 12:04:25 PM PDT by little jeremiah ("Gay Marriage" - a Weapon of Mass. Destruction!)
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To: lepton

bookmark bump


20 posted on 05/24/2004 12:42:19 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: little jeremiah
Ibrahim al-Idrissi, 37...He recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad...


So he was 15 years old then.
23 posted on 05/24/2004 1:33:51 PM PDT by Grzegorz 246
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