Saddam's reign of terror – where prisoners die in plastic shredders

Chilling new details of Saddam Hussein's reign of terror in Iraq – including prisoners being killed by being fed through industrial shredders – were revealed to MPs yesterday.

Researchers preparing an indictment of Saddam for crimes against humanity detailed evidence of torture, murder and ethnic cleansing gathered from witnesses in northern Iraq over the past few weeks. Their horrific report included eyewitness testimony of children being gassed in jail.

And the MPs heard an impassioned plea for military intervention from Shanaz Rachid, the daughter of prominent Kurdish leader Ibrahim Ahmed, who accused the international community of standing by for more than two decades while the Iraqi people suffered under Saddam.

Iraqi Kurds and Shia Muslims would welcome war to unseat the dictator, but were fearful that chemical weapons would be used to massacre them if US and UK troops withdrew from the area without toppling him, she said.

Ms Rachid was scathing about the role of French President Jacques Chirac in leading opposition to war, which she said the Kurdish people would not "easily forget".

Presenting evidence to MPs at the House of Commons, researchers from Indict – the organisation gathering evidence to prosecute Saddam and his henchmen – said many of the stories were so horrific they were difficult to believe.

But there was a "remarkable consistency" in evidence from many different sources, which boosted its credibility.

Witnesses had told them about prisoners having nails torn out, being given electric shocks to the genitals, tortured with boiling water and beaten. Women were suspended by the hair or legs in front of their families and raped, while their husbands were forced to watch.

Saddam's son Qusay – the head of Iraq's security and intelligence agencies – had administered mustard gas on prisoners, including a 12-year-old boy, whose father heard his screams from a neighbouring cell, they were told.

And Saddam's special adviser, Barzan al-Tikriti – Iraq's former representative on the UN Commission on Human Rights – had personally tortured detainees before their execution.

One witness, who spent 15 years in jail after being accused of using a false surname, described a particularly horrific method of execution: "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were ... made to watch. "Sometimes they went in head first, and died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. "Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food. On one occasion, I saw Qusay Saddam Hussein personally supervising these murders."

Kamaran Sabir, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who has worked with Indict, told MPs: "The war between Saddam's regime and the Iraqi people is continuing. It started decades ago and has caused thousands of deaths each year.

"Military co-operation to end Saddam's regime would be welcomed by the Iraqi people. We want to be able to live like the rest of the world."

Ms Rachid said: "Everybody keeps talking about the United Nations, but, as far as we are concerned, the UN has not done anything for the people of Iraq, and they will not do so.

"We have heard for so many years that the UN inspectors have gone in and destroyed weapons. As far as we are concerned, the UN could spend another 20 years going backwards and forwards to Bagdad, and nothing would change."

If the current military build-up did not lead to Saddam's overthrow, he would wreak his revenge on the Kurds of northern Iraq and Shia Muslims in the south, she claimed.

"If Saddam punishes us for siding with Britain and the US, I think that Britain, the US and the UN would be responsible for the death of millions of people in Iraq."

Members of the UN Security Council were responsible for selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam over many years, and France's opposition to war appeared to be motivated in part by the hope of securing commercial contracts with the regime, she said.

"These people are asking for war," said MP Ann Clwyd, chairman of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group and vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. "They think it is the only way to overthrow Saddam. I have to agree with them."

The evidence is overwhelming that you are wrong...

UNSCR 688 (UN Security Council Resolution 688) “condemns” Saddam Hussein’s repression of the Iraqi civilian population -- “the consequences of which threaten international peace and security.” UNSCR 688 also requires Saddam Hussein to end his repression of the Iraqi people and to allow immediate access to international humanitarian organizations to help those in need of assistance.

Saddam Hussein has repeatedly violated these provisions and has: expanded his violence against women and children; continued his horrific torture and execution of innocent Iraqis; continued to violate the basic human rights of the Iraqi people and has continued to control all sources of information (including killing more than 500 journalists and other opinion leaders in the past decade).

Saddam Hussein has also harassed humanitarian aid workers; expanded his crimes against Muslims; he has withheld food from families that fail to offer their children to his regime; and he has continued to subject Iraqis to unfair imprisonment.10

REFUSAL TO ADMIT HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORS

§ The UN Commission on Human Rights and the UN General Assembly issued a report that noted "with dismay" the lack of improvement in the situation of human rights in Iraq. The report strongly criticized the "systematic, widespread, and extremely grave violations of human rights" and of international humanitarian law by the Iraqi Government, which it stated resulted in "all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror." The report called on the Iraqi Government to fulfill its obligations under international human rights treaties. § Saddam Hussein has repeatedly refused visits by human rights monitors and the establishment of independent human rights organizations.

From 1992 until 2002, Saddam prevented the UN Special Rapporteur from visiting Iraq.11 § In September 2001 the Government expelled six UN humanitarian relief workers without providing any explanation.12

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

§ Human rights organizations and opposition groups continued to receive reports of women who suffered from severe psychological trauma after being raped by Iraqi personnel while in custody.13 § Former Mukhabarat member Khalid Al-Janabi reported that a Mukhabarat unit, the Technical Operations Directorate, used rape and sexual assault in a systematic and institutionalized manner for political purposes. The unit reportedly also videotaped the rape of female relatives of suspected oppositionists and used the videotapes for blackmail purposes and to ensure their future cooperation.§ In June 2000, a former Iraqi general reportedly received a videotape of security forces raping a female family member. He subsequently received a telephone call from an intelligence agent who stated that another female relative was being held and warned him to stop speaking out against the Iraqi Government.15

§ Iraqi security forces allegedly raped women who were captured during the Anfal Campaign and during the occupation of Kuwait. 16

§ Amnesty International reported that, in October 2000, the Iraqi Government executed dozens of women accused of prostitution.17

§ In May, the Iraqi Government reportedly tortured to death the mother of three Iraqi defectors for her children’s opposition activities.18

§ Iraqi security agents reportedly decapitated numerous women and men in front of their family members. According to Amnesty International, the victims’ heads were displayed in front of their homes for several days.

19 TORTURE § Iraqi security services routinely and systematically torture detainees. According to former prisoners, torture techniques included branding, electric shocks administered to the genitals and other areas, beating, pulling out of fingernails, burning with hot irons and blowtorches, suspension from rotating ceiling fans, dripping acid on the skin, rape, breaking of limbs, denial of food and water, extended solitary confinement in dark and extremely small compartments, and threats to rape or otherwise harm family members and relatives. Evidence of such torture often was apparent when security forces returned the mutilated bodies of torture victims to their families.20

§ According to a report received by the UN Special Rapporteur in 1998, hundreds of Kurds and other detainees have been held without charge for close to two decades in extremely harsh conditions, and many of them have been used as subjects in Iraq’s illegal experimental chemical and biological weapons programs.21

§ In 2000, the authorities reportedly introduced tongue amputation as a punishment for persons who criticize Saddam Hussein or his family, and on July 17, government authorities reportedly amputated the tongue of a person who allegedly criticized Saddam Hussein. Authorities reportedly performed the amputation in front of a large crowd. Similar tongue amputations also reportedly occurred.22

THE SCOTSMAN: No morality in leaving Iraqis in the Republic of Fear (MUST, MUST READ!)

THE 199 MPs who voted against the Prime Minister’s hard-line stance against Iraq on Wednesday night - especially the 122 Labour MPs who rebelled against their own government - should read the following paragraphs and think again. It comes from The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack, an American expert on Iraq who has the evidence and testimony to back up everything he writes about the government of the Butcher of Baghdad.

"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents. This is a regime that will crush all of the bones in the feet of a two-year-old girl to force her mother to divulge her father’s whereabouts. This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm’s length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess. This is a regime that will burn a person’s limbs off to force him to confess or comply.

"This is a regime that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid, either to break their will or simply as a means of execution. This is a regime that applies electric shocks to the bodies of its victims, particularly their genitals, with great creativity.

"This is a regime that in 2000 decreed that the crime of criticising the regime (which can be as harmless as suggesting that Saddam’s clothing does not match) would be punished by cutting off the offender's tongue.

"This is a regime that practices systematic rape against its female victims. This is a regime that will drag in a man’s wife, daughter or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him.

"This is a regime that will force a white-hot metal rod into a person’s anus or other orifices. This is a regime that employs thallium poisoning, widely considered one of the most excruciating ways to die.

"This is a regime that will behead a young mother in the street in front of her children because her husband was suspected of opposing the regime.

"This is a regime that used chemical warfare on its own Kurdish citizens - not just on the 15,000 killed and maimed at Halabja but on scores of villages all across Kurdistan.

"This is a regime that tested chemical and biological warfare agents on Iranian prisoners of war, using prisoners of war in controlled experiments to determine the best ways to disperse the agents to inflict the greatest damage."

Saddam Hussein is not Stalin...

Oh, there we disagree completely. Saddam is so like Stalin it's scary. Shall I mention a few parallels?

Both men were products of a brutal upbringing, both became smalltime thugs and local political legbreakers, both ended up as minor functionaries in revolutionary parties. Both suborned the leadership of those parties, both moved over several more likely rivals to assume leadership. Both systematically killed the rivals. Both held party congresses in which potential opponents were vilified, denounced, and executed. Both set up huge systems of policing, internal spying, denunciation, imprisonment without trial, internal prison camps. Both eliminated other political parties by mass killing. Both relocated large populations into areas they'd never occupied in an effort to suppress revolt. Both used food rationing for political control. Both acted to methodically eliminate ethnic-based opposition. Both ran reigns of terror in which merely expressing dissent aloud was cause for execution. Both personally killed members of their staffs suspected of insufficient loyalty. It goes on, and on, and on.

No, I do disagree with you on that point. Saddam really is something else in the despotism league. It is as foolish to believe all the propaganda against him as it is to hide one's eyes from what he really is. The stuff I cited isn't even silly stories, it's documented cases, many of them proudly so by Saddam himself.

For those who wish to pursue this parallel I'd recommend Martin Amis's Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million Amis has noticed the disturbing likeness and not just between Stalin and Saddam, but between their sons. This is a very grim read for those who would apologize for monsters such as these two - yes, it is difficult for normal people to grasp, but there really are people this evil.

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