From Reuters (not FOX)
Graves Show Saddam Opponents Executed Up to War
Tue April 22, 2003 09:58 AM ET
By Rosalind Russell
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) - Monday and Wednesday were execution days for Saddam Hussein's political opponents at his most notorious jail -- regular as clockwork, with no letup until just a week before war.
"Most weeks they would come with bodies, sometimes one, sometimes 10," said Mohammed Alaa, the old man who dug the graves in which they lie nameless, marked just by a number on a yellow metal plate.
In nearly 1,000 graves, a walled enclosure at the back of the Islamic cemetery on the edge of the small town of Abu Ghraib has hidden its victims for years. Only the dead were allowed in.
With Saddam gone, Iraqis have desperately sought missing relatives, searching tunnels and jails for bodies or loved ones, peering under bridges for hidden compartments, listening for voices. The search is usually fruitless.
Now they are coming here too, to sprawling Abu Ghraib, Iraq's largest prison which has been home over decades of Saddam's rule to thousands arrested for political dissent.
Qassim al-Temimi wandered among the mounds of earth at the cemetery, clutching a piece of paper bearing the name of his nephew Abas and the date of his arrest in September 1982.
Rasul Abeid, who read verses from the Koran as the bodies were buried, could offer little help.
"They were all political prisoners. The security officials gave us the number and we followed orders. Only they have records of who they are," he said. "It started in the 1980s and the last one that came was 10 days before the war."
Some relatives say the Americans now have the lists, but with the looting and chaos that followed Saddam's fall, little is clear -- and it could stay that way.
Gravedigger Alaa said the burials were shrouded in secrecy.
"The security men would bring them, no one else was allowed to come near. Sometimes they had kept the bodies so long they were decomposed, just in pieces," he said.
PRISON EMPTY
Western human rights groups say thousands of political prisoners were executed by Saddam though no one knows even an approximate figure.
In December, Britain, seeking to turn public opinion in favor of war, accused Saddam of gross human rights violations, from acid baths and eye-gouging to rape and mass execution.
Abu Ghraib, 20 miles west of Baghdad, is now empty of inmates after their jailers fled in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion. Others had been freed months earlier when Saddam pardoned political prisoners for the first time.
The metal doors of tiny, windowless cells lie open, the watchtowers on the top of 30-foot walls deserted.
Along the paved internal roads of the huge complex are portraits of Saddam, smiling, waving, holding a gun and receiving a kiss from a small girl.
One road leads to the gallows. Inside a dank, dark building, two trap doors were cut into a metal platform with the executioner's lever between them. On the floor lay a discarded rope noose.
Local residents who now roam the site say other prisoners were killed by firing squad against the perimeter wall, pointing to a section peppered with head-height bullet holes.
Some bodies were taken to the cemetery, some elsewhere, they say. Some were simply buried in the prison grounds.
Residents have already unearthed two bodies, bandaged like mummies just a couple of feet below the surface.
Another building held records of the inmates. Identity cards of Iraqis, Egyptians, Jordanians and Sudanese are scattered around, documents and letters have been piled out of filing cabinets on to the floor.
Under the orders of U.S. troops, some of the jailers have started to return. A police colonel with gold-rimmed sunglasses pulled up in a Toyota Landcruiser, reluctant to give his name or answer questions.
"I worked here as a policeman, just a policeman, checking names and identities," he said. "What can I say. I feel sadness about the treatment of prisoners here. I was only following orders." |
