Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (58646)	3/3/2005 11:03:27 AM
From: tonto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

Then do some research. You are absolutely wrong. You just are unable to admit the truth. Your statement makes absolutely no sense. It is the equivalent to those made by people that deny the holocaust. Iraqi scientists leave UK to unearth mass graves By Kate Holton Iyad is one of 33 Iraqi scientists who have been trained in Britain to dig up the hundreds of thousands of bodies thought to have been dumped in mass graves across Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein SURROUNDED by the tiny skulls and bones of children, Iraqi scientist Iyad labours under armed guard to unearth the grim truth from a mass grave. Bent double and wiping the sweat from his forehead, he works meticulously to remove the dirt caked on the skeletons. But this is no grim atrocity site in an Iraqi desert - it’s Dorset, a genteel southwest England county known for its rolling green hills and picturesque villages. Iyad is one of 33 Iraqi scientists who have been trained in Britain to dig up the hundreds of thousands of bodies thought to have been dumped in mass graves across Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein. They spent five months in Britain, working in laboratories and at a mock mass grave in Dorset, removing over 20 resin skeletons planted in the ground. Although Iyad was working under the safety and supervision of the Inforce forensic charity, he still found the experience immensely distressing. “It makes you nervous, just thinking why you are here - to work on a mass grave,” Iyad, which is not his real name, told Reuters before returning home. Inforce, a group of three highly experienced forensic scientists, arranged for the Iraqi archaeologists, anthropologists and police officers to come to Dorset to learn how to collect evidence from the grave. The project was funded by the British Foreign Office. Painful stories: The team know that although statistically unlikely, they could even discover the remains of members of their own family. “Some of them have very poignant stories, in some cases awful,” Inforce chief executive Margaret Cox said. “They’ve done incredibly well. We don’t really know what the numbers of missing are in Iraq but we know it’s probably hundreds of thousands.” The Dorset grave has been covered by a large white tent, is protected by 24-hour armed guard and is almost identical to the type of grave the scientists will find in Iraq. To make the experience more real, the grave is situated next to Ministry of Defence ground and regular artillery fire can be heard. “I’m very pleased with the realism, having been to sites in Iraq we designed it specifically to show them what they would encounter,” said senior forensic archaeologist Ian Hanson. “We’ve got security to make it as realistic as possible.” Inforce travelled to Iraq after reports that local Iraqis were digging up mass graves in search of missing relatives. They then drew up a strategy to deal with the graves which involved the trip to Britain. “If you send an international team to Africa for three months to carry out an investigation and then leave, it doesn’t help the country in its forensic capacity,” Hanson said. “(This way) they can then start to train their own people and it’s by far the preferred option.” British contact: The three members of Inforce - Cox, Hanson and forensic archaeologist Roland Wessling - have between them examined graves in Rwanda, Kosovo, Croatia, Congo and Iraq. Wessling said most forensic scientists tried to build a wall between the skeletons in the ground and the stories that accompanied them. But spending five months with the Iraqis had changed that. The Inforce team will keep in contact with the group through telephone and email and say they will be terribly nervous when the scientists start work. Security is their main concern. “They’ve been here almost five months so you do get to know them very well,” Cox said before the scientists returned to Iraq. “I think they’ve been hugely brave. When they return there will be a lot of support for what they do but there will also be a lot of opposition. They are risking their lives.” Human Rights Watch estimate some 350,000 people are missing in Iraq but Inforce say it is impossible to know. On finding a grave, the scientists will be looking for signs that the victims inside were systematically murdered and not killed in battle. Blindfolds and hands tied behind the back speak for themselves. The positioning of the bodies also offer clues as to how the person died. If a body has fallen head first into the grave, the person was probably killed on the edge and pushed in. Bodies lined across a grave would indicate that they were killed elsewhere. “In the Balkans we know that the way graves were actually created and concealed varied through time as the perpetrators became aware they were being monitored,” Cox said. “Obviously I think with Saddam Hussein it was inconceivable to him that he would ever be investigated.” Wessling said those surviving genocide or a period such as Saddam’s rule needed a trial to put the past behind them. “How many historians still try to deny the Holocaust happened?” he said. “A country needs to heal and it needs hard evidence to prove what happened.” reuters