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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (21070)	5/1/2003 8:55:58 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 93284

Fallujah, 60 miles wnw of Baghdad, in the Sunni territory. Has some folks loyal to the old gov't. Not representative of the country as a whole, I suspect. If this place was, there'd be a lot more trouble elsewhere - over 20M people in the country. Forgot whether I posted this here: news.bbc.co.uk Iraqis trace missing prisoners By Kim Ghattas In Baghdad Relatives of the missing are able to tell their story for the first time In Baghdad, a new organisation is attempting to track down thousands of political prisoners of Saddam Hussein's regime. The Free Iraqi Prisoners Organisation has begun to collect documents from all over the city. Volunteers have already issued a list of names of those who are known to have been executed, and where they may have been buried. All those who come to the centre hold a picture of a missing brother or a father. Everybody wants to tell their story. And it is an incredibly liberating experience for these Iraqis to be able finally to tell the world about life under Saddam Hussein. My family went out of Iraq. Our house was taken. Two brothers - we haven't found them for 22 years. This is the Baath Party Sawsan Jawad Zeinab is looking for her two brothers, five uncles and two cousins. She never dared ask about them before. Salam Abdullah Hussein just found the death certificate of his cousin. He was a student imprisoned in 1981 and executed by firing squad 19 year later. Sawsan Jawad is missing her two brothers. "My family went out of Iraq. Our house was taken. Two brothers - we haven't found them for 22 years. This is the Baath Party," she says. Endless lists Inside the building, volunteers of the Free Iraqi Prisoners Organisation are poring through the files, publishing endless lists of prisoners who have been executed. They call them martyrs now. So far, 20,000 names have been issued - all executed between 1980 and 1990. We have hundreds, thousands of files of people who were executed Ibrahim Idrisi Free Iraqi Prisoners Organisation head But this is just the beginning. Ibrahim Idrisi, himself a former political prisoner, is head of the organisation. "This house belonged to the former regime. We chose it as an office, to show how members of the terrorist regime lived, while prisoners were beaten and kept hungry, in underground prisons. "We have hundreds, thousands of files of people who were executed. It's very sensitive information. And we are calling for protection from the coalition forces." As Mr Idrisi tells his story, two American officers walk into the room. "You have permission in my zone to do these things. I will support you because what you are doing here is the exact right thing. You are trying to help your people," say one of the officers. Lieutenant-Colonel JR Sanderson, from the Third US Infantry Division, is in charge of this area of Baghdad. He has promised protection for Mr Idrisi and his organisation. "We will take all of these documents. We will take his workers with us. We will take him inside the security perimeter of our compound," he says. "Those folks will continue to look through the documents. We will try our best over time to help resource them, to do more and more for the Iraqi people. "And the second thing we agreed to was that this house outside of my perimeter remains the central information bureau, if you will. They will get a series of patrols around this area." Growing crowds Some of the volunteers are worried the Americans are just going to take away all the documents. Others worry that co-operation with US troops will undermine the credibility of the organisation. But outside the crowd is growing bigger, and there is only more thanks to America for liberating Iraq. More lists are put up on the walls, and more names are being read out, one after the other - an endless litany. And it is just the first step in the long and grim task to determine the fate of thousands of people who disappeared during Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship.