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LONDON (AFP) - US and British experts have discovered that Iraq was developing a banned missile, capable of reaching Israel and other parts of the Middle East, the Times reported, quoting "senior government sources". The right-of-centre newspaper said it understood British Prime Minister Tony Blair , who has called for patience in the search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, has been told that rocket motors for the missiles have been found. Sources told the paper that in the past few weeks weapons experts discovered that the Abu Ghraib military base near Baghdad was developing a weapon with a...

By Matthew McAllester Staff Correspondent April 23, 2003 PART ONE: NIGHT The first inmate I saw in Abu Ghraib prison did not wear a blindfold. He could barely see through his eyes. They were swollen ovals of purple and blue. Someone's fists, I supposed, did that to him. His shoulders slumping forward, he walked behind a guard into the cell block where we were being processed and was told to stand in the corner like a naughty school boy. He wore blue-and-white-striped pajamas and turned his face to the cinder-block walls, silent and stripped of any dignity. That man, I...

BU GHRAIB, Iraq, April 27 — They were killed perhaps three weeks ago, blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs, then shot by a government that was itself about to die. Even as American troops neared the huge prison here, Iraq continued to execute suspected spies.In the last two days, relatives looking for loved ones have unearthed 14 bodies, not inside a cemetery, but in a pit just outside Block 5, which was reserved for foreigners. Neighbors said they had found 10 more corpses on the prison grounds — like the others, all in civilian clothes and apparently killed...

Guerrilla leader who became a legend emerges from hiding For 13 years he was a defiant symbol of Iraqi resistance. Hunted in vain by Saddam Hussein's militia, the legendary guerrilla fighter Abu Hattem fought an extraordinary campaign against the Iraqi regime from his secluded bases in the poisoned marshland of southern Iraq. Known as the Lord of the Marshes, his exploits earned him a reputation that is a cross between Robin Hood and Lawrence of Arabia, with tales of suicidal missions and narrow escapes. Western journalists tried for years to track him down during the guerrilla years, visiting Iranian border...

IT WAS the stench that hit us first, gusting like a chemical cloud across the prison courtyard. The smell, unmistakable to anyone who has scented it, of human flesh slowly decomposing just under the surface of the earth. One by one, the grave diggers, toiling in a dust storm under a blazing sky, lifted the crumbling bodies from the clay-lined mass grave stretching along the prison lawn, in the shadow of an empty watchtower on top of the sprawling prison block. Each of the 13 corpses pulled from the ground was still dressed in his blue-and-white-striped prison pyjamas, his hands...

BU GHRAIB, Iraq, April 24 — First the gravedigger found some teeth. "Please, just barely scrape the sand," Adel Rahaif Hani, whose brother, Satter, was arrested as a political prisoner in 1995, begged the digger. "I'm worried he's just below this layer." Mr. Hani came to a cemetery here today, like dozens of other Iraqis, not with the name of his dead brother but with a number. Satter's number was 535. A cousin, Sagur, arrested at the same time, was 537. These numbers were what was left of people convicted as enemies of Saddam Hussein and then made to disappear....

Relatives Dig Up Missing Iraq Dissidents By NIKO PRICE .c The Associated Press ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AP) - For years there were only numbers - mound after mound in the parched dust marked by numbered metal stakes. Now this back corner of a public cemetery is filled with the wails of people who have connected those numbers to the names of loved ones who disappeared during Saddam Hussein's rule. ``They used to tell people who asked that this cemetery was for poor people who died nameless in the streets,'' said gravedigger Majid Moussa. ``But we knew it was for political...

AMERICAN military officials were investigating last night the discovery of a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of the victims of a political purge carried out in the last hours of Saddam Hussein’s regime. American soldiers sealed off the grounds of the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad after coming across a large patch of recently dug earth with the limbs and hands of bodies jutting out of it. “We believe what we have here is a war crimes site,” Major Crawford, the National Guard commander guarding the site, said. As news of the discovery spread, families of the recently...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of two Iraqis who had been missing for about a month were unearthed Tuesday with their hands tied behind their backs from graves on the grounds of the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison. Friends and relatives of the missing Iraqis were also looking for six others who were taken from a mosque about a month ago by Saddam's Fedayeen, a paramilitary group loyal to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). "We found one of our friends and we are trying to find the others. People told us that they were killed here," said Ali Khaled Shefeq,...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 10/22/02 - Abu Ghraib, Bagram, 82nd, Havat Gilad, Haderaa BREAKING: Abu Ghraib, Iraq, death row prisoners freed BREAKING: Bagram, with the 82nd Airborne heroes BREAKING: Havat Gilad BREAKING: Hadera, Aful, Israel Irbil, Iraq Soran, Iraq Sana'a, Yemen ========= Abu Ghraib, Iraq ========= In Abu Ghraib, Iraq, at the jail, 21 miles northwest of Baghdad. Waiting, inside and out - just before the release. Outside Abu Ghraib, Iraq, relatives of prisoners wait impatiently, then do not wait. In Abu Ghraib, Iraq, at the jail, 21 miles northwest of Baghdad. The riot and exit....