Iraqi prisoners of war tell of murder
By Harvey Morris in Eshkawt, northern Iraq
Published: April 9 2003 16:41 | Last Updated: April 9 2003 16:41
Saddam Hussein's militia used a combination of murder, indoctrination and bribery to try to force a reluctant Iraqi army to fight the US-led coalition, according to prisoners of war captured in recent days on the northern front.
The prisoners described paramilitary death squads - made up of Saddam's Fedayeen, Ba'ath party loyalists and military intelligence - who were charged with carrying out the battlefield executions of anyone who sought to flee or retreat.
Two men on Wednesday gave eyewitness accounts of the execution last Saturday of a commander of the Iraqi 29th brigade after he recommended retreating from Sheykhan, a frontline town that fell to US and Kurdish forces at the weekend.
"He was made to stand in a ditch for half an hour or so and then he was shot," said Salah Mehdi Taleb. "The man who shot him was Mahmoud Taher, who also gave us political education."
The indoctrination, which consisted of lectures on the soldiers' Islamic duty to resist invasion, began only when the war started, said Ayad Mohamed Qassem, the other soldier. "He was playing the role of an Islamic teacher, but he was just trying to make us fight."
The accounts of death squads operating behind the Iraqi lines echoed testimony gathered by Human Rights Watch, the international human rights agency, which interviewed 26 prisoners at Eshkawt, a tent encampment under the jurisdiction of the International Committee of the Red Cross north of Arbil.
Offering an explanation for the motivation of the death squads, Mr Taleb said: "These people were hired by the regime and were paid well so they didn't care who they shot."
Some of the prisoners were thin but otherwise looked in good health. Human Rights Watch reported that those detained earlier in the war had spoken of living on grass and being unable to wash for up to 40 days.
There are so far 360 soldiers at the camp, including six officers and 28 non-commissioned officers. Most fled the battlefield as soon as they had the chance and surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga. The camp has no perimeter fence and is only lightly guarded.
A 34-year army veteran, who served in the Iraqi 12th mechanical division, said the US air bombardment was worse than in 1991. "We had no motivation for this war. The Ba'athists only know how to threaten and frighten people, otherwise every Iraqi would join in to get rid of Saddam Hussein."
One prisoner who had been posted at the same frontline position since 1994 said food was poor and equipment scarce until about a month before the war began. Then conditions improved and pay was doubled to the equivalent of about $5 a month. "They suddenly started treating us better, to bribe us to fight," he said.
A Kurdish soldier, conscripted into the Iraqi army in Kirkuk, said the death squads warned Arab soldiers that they would be summarily killed by the Kurds if they tried to cross to their lines. "Half of them believed it and half didn't. Even those who didn't have been surprised at how well they have been received here."
Officials in the Kurdish autonomous zone have said the men should not be regarded as captives. Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic party, has said they are to be treated as the guests of the Kurdish people.
One prisoner said the violence and intimidation against the army did not begin with this war. The former Republican Guard veteran sought refuge in Kurdistan after the 1991 war but returned home to central Iraq under a 1994 amnesty. Like many others he went absent without leave shortly after rejoining his unit.
"They offered the Ba'athists a 20,000 dinar ($7) bounty for every absent soldier they captured. They caught me," he said, turning his head to the left, "and they cut off my ear."
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