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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epsteinbd who wrote (94037)	4/16/2003 8:34:32 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Respond to of 281500

I want justice not revenge, says torture victim By Sandra Laville in Nasiriyah (Filed: 17/04/2003) Haidar Salman has scars on his chest, genitals and thighs from repeated torture during three years and 45 days in an Iraqi prison. He has repeated nightmares, is physically disfigured and psychologically scarred. An alleged former prisoner revisits the site of his captivity at Iraq's intelligence service headquarters in Baghdad Like many of the tens of thousands systematically tortured by the Iraqi regime, Mr Salman, an English teacher, can reel off the names of the men responsible, senior Ba'ath Party leaders in Nasiriyah and an Iraqi colonel. He last saw them two days before the war started, walking down a street in the centre of the city. "I think I would want to kill them if I saw them now," he said. "But in fact what I want is them brought to justice." But in American-controlled Iraq there is no formal set-up for taking legal statements from those who have suffered torture or the families of the more than 200,000 people who have disappeared. With no United Nations mandate in the country, there is no international war crimes tribunal to document human rights abuses as in the former Yugoslavia. Although the International Criminal Court, which began operating this year, would be an obvious place for such cases, America has refused to sign up to the court. Mr Salman was one of hundreds of Shia Muslims rounded up by the regime in Nasiriyah after the murder of the prominent cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr in 1999. He had dared to speak out in the mosque against the killing. "They pulled me out of my classroom at gunpoint and dragged me to the security police headquarters," said Mr Salman, 34. "They blindfolded me and tied my hands, then put me in a cell underground 10 metres square, with no windows. They beat me with sticks, pulled my hands above my head and shoved electric cables on to my genitals. "I spent 45 days in this room with 40 others, being tortured every day. There was no food, people around me were dying in the cell and I was sure I would die there. Every day they came to me and I looked into their faces. I would never forget them." Moved to Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the torture with electric cables continued as Ba'ath Party figures tried to force him to give the names of people denouncing Saddam Hussein. It was not until Mr Salman's wife and children - a son then aged six and a five-year-old daughter - were dragged from their home to Baghdad and beaten with sticks in front of him that he gave his tormentors what they wanted and was sentenced to six years in jail. He was released last August. Mr Salman keeps the prison picture of himself, a skeletal figure with the lifeless eyes of a torture victim, in his pocket and the piece of paper which lists the charge against him. With these he hopes he will one day find justice, but the only people who will take his testimony in Nasiriyah are a US marine sergeant and a lieutenant. Seated on school desks in Nasiriyah Park, they listen as Iraqis spill out tales of torture and mass murder. "We hand the information over to colleagues who try to verify their stories," said Gunner Sgt Heidi Shuerger. "And sure, the intention would be that those responsible somehow come to justice." There is little idea, however, of how and when that will happen. Capt Jay Delarosa, spokesman for the US marines in Nasiriyah, said little thought had been given to the problem of how to handle the many cases of human rights abuses and potential war crimes against ordinary Iraqis. "I don't think anyone took this into account when they carried out the planning process. We are kind of writing the book as we speak." telegraph.co.uk

To: epsteinbd who wrote (94037)	4/16/2003 11:06:01 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<Breathing freely...> You mean the ones chanting "No Saddam, no Bush" in the streets? They probably are sighing in relief, that the Baathist oppression has been removed. But free? Not yet, not until the foreign army of occupation is gone. <...not having a dictatorship...> Using the dictionary definition, a dictatorship is exactly what they will have, after the (hopefully short) current period of chaos is over. The U.S. soldiers and ex-soldiers, appointed from Washington, they will "dictate" to the Iraqis. As they are doing today. They will exercise absolute and arbitrary authority, backed up by force, not by the "consent of the governed." We are already appointing and choosing and selecting the un-elected Iraqis who will serve us. How legitimate can any election be, if every city and town is patrolled by a foreign army? Were the elections in E. Europe legitimate, from 1945-1990? Is it a coincidence, that in every nation in W. Europe with U.S. soldiers in it during the Cold War, no Communist Party won an election? Is it a coincidence, that the Republican Party won elections in the U.S. South when the Union Army occupied them, but the Democrats won every election there, as soon as the army was withdrawn? If the Turkish army occupied Kurdistan, and a pro-Turkish government was elected under their supervision, how legitimate would that be? If the Iranian army occupied the Shiite parts of Iraq, and held an election, (with the predictable result), would you accept that as legitimate? No election is legitimate, if held under the guns of any foreign army of occupation. And, yes, that includes our army. <....that is the value, the long lasting historical one.> It is the "triumph of hope over experience" to believe what we do in Iraq will last. Or that Operation Iraqi Freedom will deliver on its promise. The relevant examples from history are Afghanistan and Kuwait, not Germany and Japan. If I thought there was even a 50/50 chance that we could actually deliver freedom, I'd agree with you, all the costs would be acceptable. The cost in money and lives (ours and theirs), the temporary chaos, the looted museum, it would all be worthwhile, in a good cause. I'm sure the Redcoats at Lexington thought they were serving a good cause, too.