Human Shredding in Abu Ghraib Prison

Baghdad Bulletin ^ | 7/16/03 | Ann Clwyd

[LakeLady]

I never imagined when I wrote in March about the plastic shredder used to kill in one of Saddam’s prisons that I would, some months later, read in a chillingly meticulous record book that one of the methods of execution was “mincing”.

I had just finished a press conference in the still-shabby British Embassy in Baghdad, when a reporter from FoxTV told me that he had been handed for safekeeping by an Iraqi a 56-page record book from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Later, at the Sheridan hotel, we scanned the horrific record of Saddam’s sadism and brutality. The prison itself, really a vast concentration camp, is on the edge of a small town. Market traders sell fresh fruit and vegetables, children play ball in the dusty streets. The normality of life outside this ghastly place, where so many lives came to an end, is itself horrible, since many of the people probably would have worked in the prison. I walked around talking to groups of young boys messing around on their bikes. Two of them, not more than 16 years old, told me they had been guards.

Just a few days before the Americans arrived, they said, the remaining prisoners had been killed; stood in trenches up to their waists and shot through the head.

In the corridors there are murals of Saddam Hussein: Saddam with a hawk on his shoulder; Saddam with a rocket-launcher and a dove in the barrel; Saddam in a silk shirt with a cigar. His victims were taken from dark and overcrowded cells to the execution block with its ceiling hooks and levers that catapulted them to a grisly death in the pits below. Some were still alive. The guards then broke their necks by standing on them.

The UN could have gone on passing resolutions and sending in inspectors and reporters for the next 50 years, but in the end there was no realistic alternative to war. Those who bleat about weapons of mass destruction or question the legality of war should talk to the Iraqi people. They are irritated. They ask, “Don’t they care about us? About mass graves? About torture?” Stand at the mass grave at al-Hillah where up to 15,000 people are buried, hands tied behind their backs, bullets through their brains.

Examine the pitiful possessions found so far: a watch, a faded ID card, a comb, a ring, a clump of black hair. Watch the old woman in her black chador, tattoos on her gnarled hands, looking through the plastic bags on top of unidentified, reburied bodies, for something that will help her to find her son, who disappeared in 1991.

Stand at the mass grave near Kirkuk, where huge mechanized trucks churn the earth in clouds of dust. Look at the skeletons now tenderly reburied in simple wooden coffins. Talk to Mirrim, who was only 12 at the time of the 1991 mass arrests. He, his mother, uncle and cousins were piled on buses. They turned off on to a farm road and the executions started. People were thrown into a pit, machine-gunned and then buried with a bulldozer. Mirrim crawled out of the mass grave, leaving his dead relatives behind.

A house in Baghdad, formerly the private home of one of Saddam’s secret police, has been taken over by those who seek to put the record straight. Outside, on the banks of the Tigris, hundreds of Shiite men search through the records found so far.

Dusty papers and old files fill every room. In one are three computers into which 150,000 names of the dead and where they died have been logged in just two weeks. In another room is some of the torture equipment: a chiropractor’s couch wired to administer electric shocks, the weights and pulleys used to apply pain. All around are grieving relatives, women in black chadors clutching tearfully at my arm. They have waited 12 long years for news. They still wait. Saddam, like Hitler and Pol Pot, kept meticulous records of his crimes. At the same time, Baath party men are said to be buying up the files that implicate them in the crimes.

The director of this self-help centre was in prison eight times. Once they took off all his toenails. He shows me photographs of executions and the bloodied, battered body of a university lecturer from Basra, still alive, his sawn-off arm lying by his side.

On the streets of Baghdad, WMD is not an issue. “Thanks to Bush and Blair,” they cry. I ask what would have happened if they had spoken to me like this in the past on the streets of Baghdad. One man slowly drew his hand, palm down, across his throat.

Ann Clwyd is a member of the British Parliament and has been a human rights activist for three decades. She is Prime Minister Tony Blair’s special envoy for human rights.

[LakeLady]

This is my first post. Sorry in advance for any errors. I hope it is not a repeat. I searched long and hard before posting.

[LakeLady]

I see my first error. This is not an excerpt. It is posted in its entirety so don't bother with the URL reference.

[Jeff Chandler]

I can't wait for this story to be trumpeted in the NY Times, Wash Post, CBS, Nightline, 60 Minutes, ABC, NBC, etc., etc., etc..

I can't wait because I'll be waiting for something that will never happen. What will continue to happen is the trumpeting of stories of anti-American Iraqis.

[ellery]

btttt

[ellery]

Great first post...thank you and welcome!

[Cobra64]

But... but... I thought Islam is the religion of peace. Am I wrong? /sarcasm.

[blam]

Looks good, you did well, good post. Thanks.

[LakeLady]

That's the truth. I'm sure it won't get any play in the British or EU press either. Do you think the American "Fiberals" would give it any credibility. Perhaps Hollywood will do a movie. It has all the elements they require...violence, gore, horror, etc. Of course, in their pc view, the villains would have to be changed to the coalition soldiers, not the original evil perpetrators.

[blam]

BTW, I live by a lake in Alabama too.

[O.C. - Old Cracker]

At best, the major networks will gloss over this story.

How much longer will we, the silent majority, sit back and watch our country's press churn out lies and ignore the truth? How long before our second civil war occurs?

[BluH2o]

This is my first post. Sorry in advance for any errors. I hope it is not a repeat. I searched long and hard before posting.

I was a lurker for a couple of months before registering ... then a few more weeks before my first post. Good work ... you did just fine.

[LakeLady]

Thanks for the kind words. I've been lurking for a while and decided to just jump in head first. I'm glad now that I did.

[Jeff Chandler]

>>in their pc view, the villains would have to be changed to the coalition soldiers<<

Or they could use the story and change the villians to tongue-talking evangelical southern white supremist homophobic abortion clinic-bombing Republican Marines.

[LakeLady]

The mincing scenario is missing one Hollywood requirement for a blockbuster hit...graphic, panting, slobbering wall sex! I'm sure the grinding of humans is not enough to guarantee financing of such a project. I know they could fit it in somehow. Perhaps those tongue-talking...southern Republican marines could slam the victims against the wall before mincing them.

[LakeLady]

marines = Marines

[sweetliberty]

Very good, if chilling, first post. Of course, the war still can't be justified because we haven't found the WMD's yet. < /sarcasm >

[LakeLady]

It is amazing, isn't it? Feel good politics are devastating this country!

[pt17]

This is my first post.

You did good! Thanks for jumping and posting it.

[sweetliberty]

I was reading a thread several months ago at the DU when it first came out about people being put in shredders. They refused to believe it. I guess it just didn't fit their political model. They actually believed it was something made up by the Bush adminstration. Yet another glimpse into how far afield the RATs have strayed. They claim to be such champions of human rights, but when it doesn't jive with their agenda, they can turn their backs on a brutal dictator who, in my opinion, is every bit as evil as Hitler and even more sadistic.