Saddam's crimes.
Unspeakable Acts: Mass Murder
Photo by Thomas Hartwell
Aweda Abed Al-Amer, 48, grieves over two members of her family found in a mass grave in Musayib, 75 KM SW of Baghdad. She lost 5 members of her family including her husband, son and 3 nephews after an uprising against the Iraqi government in 1991.The bodies wrapped in linen shrouds are being held in a makeshift morgue in a youth center for possible identification.
"Now, 12 years later, Mr. Shaati cannot remember if the women and children beside him screamed as the bullets hit, or whether the men in the hole moaned as they died. He only recalls a moment of hollow silence when the soldiers stopped shooting. Then came the throaty rumble of a backhoe and the thud of wet earth dropping on bodies. He survived but saw hundreds of other innocents buried in another of Saddam Hussein's anonymous mass graves."
-- The New York Times, June 2, 2003
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"The soldiers took them out in groups of 100 to 150 people. When his time came, Mr. Shaati was ordered to remove his T-shirt and rip it into strips that were tied over his eyes and around his hands. The prisoners were herded onto a bus, everyone holding on with their teeth to the shirt of the person in front of them. When they arrived at a field - Mr. Shaati is still not sure where - their grave had already been prepared. 'They led us down an incline into a wide long hole,' he said. 'It was quiet. No one fell or even cried. I was positioned very close to the corner, maybe second or third from the wall. Then they started shooting. Somehow I wasn't hit. By then, I guess, they didn't go to the trouble of shooting all of us.' After the grave was covered, Mr. Shaati, alive but choking on dirt, wormed his way out of the ditch. He punched through the earthen blanket with his head, and worked himself free of the cloth straps. Gulping the cold night air, he knew that all his soldierly ideas about honor and country counted for nothing."
-- The New York Times, June 2, 2003
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"The executions took place two or three times on most days, Arjawi said. Each time, between 100 and 150 blindfolded people, their hands and sometimes feet bound, were led into pits about 10 feet deep. Gunmen then fired into the pit, often for several minutes, Arjawi said. A bulldozer then pushed dirt onto the bodies, sometimes burying or crushing people who had survived the volley and were trying to climb out."
-- Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2003
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Photo by Thomas Hartwell
Iraqis search for their relatives and friends among victims found in a mass grave in Musayib, 75 KM SW of Baghdad. The victims are thought to be from among some 2,000 persons reported missing after the 1991 uprising against the Iraqi government. The bodies wrapped in linen shrouds are being held in a makeshift morgue in a youth center.
"[J]ust to see the landscape of bones mixed with clothing, skulls strewn in the splay of human detritus and other remains is chilling. At first, it just seems like hundreds of bundles of clothes have been laid out on the dikes and roads that cut through the marshes here.
"Then the traces of human anatomy appear. A femur from a leg, a humerus from an arm, a shard of pelvis, and skull peeking out from a gray blanket that someone assembling remains laid down. The bundles reveal themselves as the former repositories of living human flesh, before the gunfire sent them on their journey into the marsh.
"'It's a kind of hell out there,' said Mr. Nasir, who no longer plants onions where so many bodies have been desecrated. 'We have always known that there were people here, but we couldn't take them,' he said. 'We knew our Muslim brothers were not buried properly, but we couldn't say a word.'"
-- The New York Times, May 14, 2003
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Sally Hodgson - Department of State
A sign of mourning posted recently outside a house in a neighborhood a few kilometers from a mass grave southeast of Basrah. The sign in Arabic reads: "Matar Jaber Ali was killed by Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party in 1991." Matar's brothers put up the sign outside their house after they dug up a robe at the mass grave, which they believe their brother was wearing when he disappeared in 1991. Similar signs can be seen posted throughout southern Iraq, often with printed photos of people missing or killed by Saddam's brutal regime.
"'This is my brother,' declared Munther Taffuk after examining the freshly exhumed corpse, relieved to a point that he had found his missing sibling after a two-year search. Munther then moved in for a closer look. 'My God,' he screamed. 'They took out his eyes.' He then pulled two matted pieces of cotton wool from the eye sockets of his little brother's skull and wept.
"His sister, Manal, cried openly as she said her younger brother, Muthfer, simply vanished without trace two years ago. 'My God, look what they did. This is my brother, he did nothing wrong.'"
-- Times of Oman, April 22, 2003
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"The skeletal remains on display Monday showed signs of physical trauma. Some still had faded bandages tied around the eye sockets and black cloth binding the feet. Several skulls had large holes on one side or were crushed in the back. In each open wooden coffin, the bones were carefully wrapped in white cloth, surrounded by scraps of hair, bits of teeth and bones. The visible evidence of their demise drove scores of black-clad women to wailing and men to weep."
-- Associated Press, May 12, 2003
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Photo by Thomas Hartwell
Iraqi workers dig for the remains of Iraqis from a mass grave in Musayib, 75 KM SW of Baghdad. The victims are thought to be from among some 2,000 persons reported missing after the 1991 uprising against the Iraqi government.
"The grave was no more than a long trench, with dirt shoveled over the men executed for their role in the uprising here in 1999 after the killing of a prominent Shiite cleric, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, said relatives who viewed the remains today.
"On March 25, 1999, a shepherd in the desert about 45 miles north of Basra saw men being brought by Baath Party trucks to an open clearing, said Ali Hassan, 20. The shepherd said he saw a backhoe dig a long trench and the men, blindfolded, were lined up in front of the ditch. Then they were shot."
-- The New York Times, May 12, 2003
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"In May 1991, having served in the Persian Gulf War with the Marines, I volunteered for further duty in Provide Comfort -- a joint military operation designed to assist in the relocation of Kurdish refugees into northern Iraq. Assigned to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, I was flown to the city of Zakho, where the unit was establishing its headquarters in and around an abandoned Iraqi divisional headquarters building....
"As the Marines began digging defensive positions and putting up tents, a grisly discovery was made. Heavy equipment had unearthed myriad body parts; hands, arms, legs, etc., were uncovered in what was determined to have been a mass grave. Most telling among this evidence of inhumanity was an infant's sandal.
"The body parts were reburied immediately after their discovery, but for many days the stench of rotting flesh lingered in the air until all the remains were located and reburied. It was later learned from the Kurds that about 70 of their tribesmen had been taken into this Iraqi divisional HQ and that none had come out alive. The victims were brutally tortured and executed, their remains then thrown into a common grave."
-- James Zumwalt, op-ed in The Washington Post, April 30, 2003
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"Near Kirkuk, U.S. military forces discovered about 1,500 unmarked graves last week near a military base and industrial park. Officials believe they are the remains of victims of Saddam's repression of ethnic minorities, including Iraqi Kurds. Tens of thousands of Kurdish men disappeared under Saddam and were killed, according to human rights groups."
"Beth Ann Toupin, an Iraq specialist with Amnesty International, said it is still early to know the magnitude of rights abuses under Saddam. 'There's probably much more to be found,' she said, noting that hidden prisons may be discovered. 'And what's new to us is that now people care.'"
-- The Washington Times, April 23, 2003
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"The Baath regime has gone and now we can talk freely with you. They [the corpses] are all political. Ten to 15 bodies would arrive at a time from the Abu Ghraib prison and we would bury them here. The last corpse interred was number 993."
-- Mohymeed Aswad, manager of Baghdad cemetery, Agence France-Presse, April 21, 2003
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"The civilians were hanged. Sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot. I could distinguish them by their uniforms. This grave belongs to a woman. She was hanged. There are another five cemeteries in Baghdad with secret gravesites so in this city alone there are about 6,000 (political) corpses."
-- Gravedigger at a Baghdad cemetery, Agence France-Presse, April 21, 2003
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"I have spoken to a prison officer who worked there. He had no idea how many people were killed in that prison but he said it must have been thousands. In one corner of that prison outside the walls of an inner secure area we found relatives grieving over an open grave where they had found a number of bodies. Bodies who have had their hands tied behind their backs - they had been shot in the head.
"It is our understanding that these people had been rounded up for the simple crime of having a satellite mobile telephone. As such they were suspected of being American spies. They were shot in the dying days of the regime even though those who shot them must have known that the end was up."
-- Tim Rogers, ITV News (UK), reporting from Baghdad on bodies found in a prison run by the Iraqi Ministry of Social Affairs, April 22, 2003
