[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Marines free 123 from Iraq hellhole

FOR three days, American tanks have been shelling a military intelligence building in the posh Al-Khathamia area in west Baghdad.

The dozen or so tanks are not here to pound intransigent fighters but to break down concrete beams and steel, to reach bunkers deep underground at the Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya facility.
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The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers.

Being trapped underground probably kept them safe from the bombing of Baghdad by the coalition.

Severely emaciated, some had survived by eating the scabs off their sores. All the men had beards down to their waists, said onlookers.

Most looked absolutely dazed when they emerged, said Mr Sadoun Mohamed, 37, who lives in the area.

'They had not seen sunlight for a long time,' he said. 'They kept blinking and covering their faces.' He said they were taken to the Saddam Hospital for treatment.

Their names were posted on the walls of the Al-Hajabehia Mosque in west Baghdad, as were names of some 40 others known to have been executed or murdered in prison.

Hundreds of anxious locals wait for word of their family, relatives and friends, some of whom were taken away more than 10 years ago.

Outside Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya, Mr Sadeq Al Saeed, 24, a construction worker, has been waiting sleepless for the last 36 hours. He said he had heard the facility had five levels below ground.

He said his father, an Iraqi army captain, was killed in 1991 during the first Gulf War, and his cousins Amer and Jasem and some 50 others were picked out by the secret police for chanting anti-Saddam slogans during the funeral procession.

'That was the last I saw of them,' he said.

'In the night, people raided their houses, blindfolded them and took them away.'

He hopes against hope that the Marines will be able to find his cousins, who were brought here to be interrogated.

This hellhole is believed to be one of many for Iraq's political prisoners. Thousands may still be behind bars though the regime released many criminals from prisons before the war.

Original link Apr.16

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[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Yasser Alaskary
Media affairs director, Iraqi Prospect Organisation
Wednesday May 21, 2003, UK Guardian

 

"I am feeling quite low at the moment; I did think that people opposed to the war were genuinely concerned for the Iraqi people and the losses we might have suffered. Now I realise that people's opinions of this war were based almost entirely on a hatred of American policy.

 

I have always said that declaring war on the basis of the presence of weapons of mass destruction was stupid, but I would have supported anything that got rid of Saddam. It is only now that people living in Iraq can say that they supported the war."

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Yasser Alaskey, Feb. 2003:

 

"The authorities came to find my parents in the middle of the night - they suspected my father of being involved in the opposition. My uncle pretended to be my father to give him time to run away. My father was taken to the Iranian border by a friend while my mother was driven to Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq. She was hiding in a small village when she gave birth to me in August 1980. She later fled with me to Syria with fake documents, before coming to Britain.

When Saddam's men come after one person they hunt the whole family. My mother's sister and her family were also suspected of supporting the opposition. In Iraq, mere suspicion of something is enough to get you taken in for questioning. Reports from people released from prison say they saw the authorities burning my two-year-old cousin alive in front of her parents to get them to talk. As they refused my aunt was raped in front of my uncle and executed. Eventually my uncle was also executed. My grandparents managed to hide their one-year-old son; he was later smuggled to Iran."

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