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Posted on 11/21/2004 8:25:05 PM PST by crushelits
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 21 - In one house hung a black banner with the words "One God and Jihad" and a distinctive yellow sun, terrifyingly familiar as the backdrop to videotaped beheadings by the group of that name. In another house there was a cage large enough to hold a human and a wall marked with Arabic writing and what appears to be a fingerprint in dried blood.
Before the doors to these houses in Falluja were thrown open to two reporters on Sunday, soldiers and intelligence officers had already carried away other items from them, handcuffs, shackles, militant propaganda, bayonets, and knives - crusted with what looked like blood and resembling the ones used in the beheadings. A detailed photograph-catalog of the items was shown to the reporters in an intelligence report.
American and Iraqi government officials have long said that Falluja was a center of the Iraqi insurgency and a depot where militants held hostages with impunity before the American-led invasion two weeks ago. A tour of the two houses on Sunday represented the first time that American journalists saw direct evidence of the places where the hostages may have been imprisoned and, in some cases, killed in videotaped executions. Even so, there is no way to know for now exactly what happened here. Because the houses were discovered only a few days ago and there has been no DNA testing or comparison of this setting with the videos, it cannot be said for certain that these were the last rooms that foreign or Iraqi hostages saw before their lives were ended.
But both locations were found through Iraqi informants, one of them someone who said that he had been held hostage in the house with the black banner, American investigators said. They quoted the informant as saying he had heard the voices of at least three other hostages in neighboring rooms, including one he believed to be that of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer decapitated in early October.
The houses are among almost 20 sites discovered over the past two weeks in Falluja where American and Iraqi military officers contend that atrocities were committed. Maj. Jim West, an intelligence officer with the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said the sites included houses where Western hostages appear to have been held and others where insurgents tortured or killed residents to help enforce their rule in the city, some of them basement rooms with bloody handprints on the wall.
Last week, Iraqi soldiers searching a house discovered what appeared to be a command center for militants associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who is the most wanted insurgent in Iraq. In that house, the soldiers found what they said were believed to be letters between Mr. Zarqawi and some of his lieutenants, along with weapons, computers, bomb-making materials and medical supplies.
And there has been at least one discovery of a quite different kind. Near the house with the cage, soldiers searched a house that officials said contained a primitive chemical weapons lab. They said the lab had sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and other chemicals, along with indications that insurgents were trying to use them to make bombs. Exactly what weaponry they were experimenting with is not clear. There were no reports of chemical weapons used in the battle for Falluja.
The two houses that had been filled with the paraphernalia of torture, though, provided the most graphic glimpse yet of what seem to have been horrific prisons.
The black banner was found inside a house in southeast Falluja, site of the worst fighting last week. In full, the yellow lettering on the banner read "The organization of One God and Jihad," the former name of the network run by Mr. Zarqawi.
The group, which has changed its name to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, is believed to be responsible for bombings, beheadings, and ambushes that have left hundreds dead across Iraq.
Eliminating Mr. Zarqawi's network was one of the goals of the American-led offensive in Falluja. One of the houses, in a residential area now strewn with rubble, contains two rooms where American military officials say they believe that the hostages were kept, with metal handcuffs, plastic zip cuffs, and shackles. Another shackle had been attached to a rod in the bathroom, apparently to keep hostages chained up while they were in that room, officials said
When a reportertoured the house with Marine officers on Sunday, the handcuffs and shackles had been removed, but it was still strewn with the black masks and black tennis sneakers favored by the insurgents.
Underneath a staircase is an alcove where American officials believe that hostages were interrogated and tortured. Its walls are stained with a dark substance, with two large nails sticking out.
Investigators also found cellphones, computer disks, burnt documents, and cassette players in the house, as well as the bayonets and large knives, officials said. The other house is in a residential neighborhood closer to the center of the city. Inside it is a cage fashioned out of wire and metal about seven feet high, seven feet wide and four feet deep, set against a brick wall in a corner. Within the cage was a discarded I.V. bag, an empty bag of potato chips and a fluorescent light.
On Sunday, two Marine officers stood in front of the cage and held up a photograph of Mr. Bigley, who was videotaped in a similar cage before he was decapitated last month. One officer said the cages did not appear to match. Others who were present, though, said the evidence recovered earlier at least suggested that people had been kept in the cage.
In a windowless room nearby, there was a fingerprint on the wall, in what looked like dried blood. Near it was the word "hope," written on the wall in Arabic letters. Also on the wall were the words for "put," "kept," "plan" and "to pass on," in no intelligible order, according to an Army translator.
In another room, a piece of wire hung from the ceiling. Verses from the Koran were scrawled on walls in several places. Children's clothing, pictures and a child's pink bicycle were heaped into a corner, as though squatters had moved in and pushed aside the inhabitants' belongings.
Thin mattresses and frying pans with scraps of food in them were on the floor. By the window, covered with curtains fashioned from detergent sacks stitched together, was a box of onions, still fresh.
Two houses away was the makeshift chemical lab, where plastic bags of powder with Arabic labels sat on a shelf. Across the room were several rubber gloves and bottles of chemicals. A grenade sat upright on the table, its detonator removed. One plastic bag of pale powdery substance was labeled "TNT." A faint chemical odor hung in the air.
Chief Warrant Officer Lee Fair of the First Battalion, EighthMarines, said a neighboring room held evidence that someone had been mixing chemicals to make a "blood agent," a highly toxic compound. There were also blasting caps, apparently an effort to spread the agent through explosives, he said.
"Anyone that knew what they were doing could put those things together and make something very dangerous," he said.
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Just one question. Where did Zarqawi (a chemical weapons expert) get the chemical agents found in the makeshift lab?
The thing that's upsetting to the world, however, is that a marine may in the fog of war unnecessarily shot and killed one of the terrorists supporting this operation, an operation to end the depravity of the terrorists in Fallujah.
Sooner or later.
Quick scan of the NYTimes article for the word "murder" - Nope. Not there.
Snoopy agrees.....
Floors wont be red but dark brown to almost black and will be flaky, my grandmother had a chicken farm and in the slaughter house the floors were of that color dark brown to almost black and always flaking no matter how well they were cleaned.
Dried blood also has a distinct smell you'll know it once you've smelt it.
Well the truth hurts.
I think the support for Islam by 75% of its "believers" is a millimeter deep. All the public 5X/day praying is to enforce visible compliance. Once mecca is craterized (an event we will see) those 75% will lose their fear and self-liberate. For now, they are terrorized into public compliance.
I think the support for Islam by 75% of its "believers" is a millimeter deep. All the public 5X/day praying is to enforce visible compliance.
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You might have something there with the physical displays of phony worship. To inculcate and brainwash the Islamic masses. Same as Muhammadanism places so much value on it's mosques while obliterating the churches and synagogues of others
Thanks a lot, my dog is now attacking the computer.
Torture and death houses.These creatures make Jeffrey Dahmer look like
a really nice fella in comparison.It'll probably take a few more Fallujahs to root
these monsters out, too.
Snoopy agrees..... You bet I do. These people need to be wiped from the earth.
Smokin' out the bad guys ~ Bump!
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