Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/16/2003 5:08:32 PM PDT by MadIvan
Haidar Salman has scars on his chest, genitals and thighs from repeated torture during three years and 45 days in an Iraqi prison. He has repeated nightmares, is physically disfigured and psychologically scarred.
Like many of the tens of thousands systematically tortured by the Iraqi regime, Mr Salman, an English teacher, can reel off the names of the men responsible, senior Ba'ath Party leaders in Nasiriyah and an Iraqi colonel. He last saw them two days before the war started, walking down a street in the centre of the city.
"I think I would want to kill them if I saw them now," he said. "But in fact what I want is them brought to justice."
But in American-controlled Iraq there is no formal set-up for taking legal statements from those who have suffered torture or the families of the more than 200,000 people who have disappeared.
With no United Nations mandate in the country, there is no international war crimes tribunal to document human rights abuses as in the former Yugoslavia. Although the International Criminal Court, which began operating this year, would be an obvious place for such cases, America has refused to sign up to the court.
Mr Salman was one of hundreds of Shia Muslims rounded up by the regime in Nasiriyah after the murder of the prominent cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr in 1999. He had dared to speak out in the mosque against the killing.
"They pulled me out of my classroom at gunpoint and dragged me to the security police headquarters," said Mr Salman, 34. "They blindfolded me and tied my hands, then put me in a cell underground 10 metres square, with no windows. They beat me with sticks, pulled my hands above my head and shoved electric cables on to my genitals.
"I spent 45 days in this room with 40 others, being tortured every day. There was no food, people around me were dying in the cell and I was sure I would die there. Every day they came to me and I looked into their faces. I would never forget them."
Moved to Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the torture with electric cables continued as Ba'ath Party figures tried to force him to give the names of people denouncing Saddam Hussein.
It was not until Mr Salman's wife and children - a son then aged six and a five-year-old daughter - were dragged from their home to Baghdad and beaten with sticks in front of him that he gave his tormentors what they wanted and was sentenced to six years in jail. He was released last August.
Mr Salman keeps the prison picture of himself, a skeletal figure with the lifeless eyes of a torture victim, in his pocket and the piece of paper which lists the charge against him. With these he hopes he will one day find justice, but the only people who will take his testimony in Nasiriyah are a US marine sergeant and a lieutenant.
Seated on school desks in Nasiriyah Park, they listen as Iraqis spill out tales of torture and mass murder. "We hand the information over to colleagues who try to verify their stories," said Gunner Sgt Heidi Shuerger. "And sure, the intention would be that those responsible somehow come to justice."
There is little idea, however, of how and when that will happen. Capt Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the US marines in Nasiriyah, said little thought had been given to the problem of how to handle the many cases of human rights abuses and potential war crimes against ordinary Iraqis.
"I don't think anyone took this into account when they carried out the planning process. We are kind of writing the book as we speak."
Regards, Ivan
Well, of course they didn't think this problem though.
Why would they? This was a war about grabbing oil and enriching Bushies friends.
< / sarcasm >
Hmmmmm. Given my sense of justice, Hussein's thugs better beg for mere revenge, because it would hurt a lott less.
"Salman's wife and children - a son then aged six and a five-year-old daughter - were dragged from their home to Baghdad and beaten with sticks in front of him"Those who opposed President Bush's intervention,
Those so-called "journalists" who withheld knowledge of such atrocities from the public,
Those who supported the Saddam Tikriti regime, by omission or comission,
Those who collaborated
Share the blame!
You know, this was not like the war crimes committed by Germans against the people of Europe. These were acts committed by Iraqis on Iraqis. I don't understand the need for any international jurisdiction over what is obviously an Iraqi matter.
IMHO, the desire for a system of government that would redress these wrongs will probably speed up the implementation of a new Iraqi government. The people are hungry for it.
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