Iraqis share graphic tales of regime's torture chambers
Mon Apr 14,12:22 PM ET
BAGHDAD -- Pictures of dead Iraqis, with their necks slashed, their eyes gouged out and their genitals blackened, fill a bookshelf. Jail cells, with dried blood on the floor and rusted shackles bolted to the walls, line the corridors. And the screams of what could be imprisoned men in an underground detention center echo through air shafts and sewer pipes.
''This is the place where Saddam made people disappear,'' said an Iraqi soldier named Iyad Hussein, 37, describing Iraq (news - web sites)'s Military Intelligence Directorate in the northwestern suburb of Kadimiya. ''It is a chamber of death.''
The secrets of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s reign of terror are beginning to emerge. Iraqi civilians who had long feared speaking out about the atrocities for fear of government retribution are revealing in detail what the Iraqi dictator and his regime inflicted on some of the country's 26 million people.
They paint a picture of arrests, killings and torture that have led human rights groups to condemn the Iraqi leader in the strongest terms. The groups have charged that tens of thousands of Iraqis, from Kurds in the north to Shiites in the south, were tortured and killed after Saddam seized power in 1979.
Thousands were arrested on charges ranging from criticizing the Iraqi leader to cooperating with the United States.
Only a few walked out of the jails alive.
Some Iraqis are already coming forward with tales of atrocities. Many allegedly were carried out here at the Military Intelligence Directorate.
''I was beaten, refrigerated naked and put underground for one year because I was a Shiite and Saddam is a Sunni,'' said Ali Kaddam Kardom, 37. He said he was arrested in the central city of Karbala on March 10, 2000. He returned to the facility in Baghdad this weekend, he said, to help rescue any Iraqis who still might be imprisoned there.
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Initially, U.S. forces will have to rely on testimony from survivors of Saddam's brutality because some of the key documentary evidence has disappeared, U.S. officials said. When U.S. forces entered the headquarters of the once-feared Iraqi Intelligence Service, across town from the Military Intelligence Directorate, they found the place had been cleaned out even before the Baghdad looters arrived, a U.S. intelligence official said Sunday. Looters have destroyed evidence at other government agencies.
Torture tales
As U.S. forces entered the Iraqi capital, hundreds of military intelligence officers fled the Directorate's headquarters. Apparently, they feared being captured or killed by U.S. forces or beaten by Iraqis for decades of tortures and killings committed here.
Over the weekend, relatives of those arrested began arriving at the now-abandoned intelligence headquarters to inquire about loved ones. They brought pictures, birth certificates and dental records. It was the first time most had even approached the main gate, much less entered the site. Signs outside the headquarters read ''Forbidden to enter under penalty of death.''
Kardom, one of the former prisoners who came back, was kept in the facility's underground prison until March 10, records here show. He was charged with ''religious incitement'' against the government.
He denied any wrongdoing.
''Under Saddam, there were no rights of appeal,'' Kardom said. ''I begged them to stop as they beat me. It only inspired them to beat me harder.''
An Iraqi soldier, who according to the facility's records witnessed the beatings, said interrogators regularly used pliers to remove men's teeth, electric prods to shock men's genitals and drills to cut holes in their ankles.
In one instance, the soldier recalled, he witnessed a Kuwaiti soldier, who had been captured during the 1991 Persian Gulf War (news - web sites), being forced to sit on a broken Pepsi bottle. The man was removed from the bottle only after it filled up with his blood, the soldier said. He said the man later died.
''I have seen interrogators break the heads of men with baseball bats, pour salt into wounds and rape wives in front of their husbands,'' said former Iraqi soldier Ali Iyad Kareen, 41.
He then produced dozens of Polaroid pictures of beaten and dead Iraqis from the directorate's files.
The beatings continued until the last days of the old government. Iraqi Maj. Shakir Hamid, 33, and his two brothers said they were arrested March 5 by military intelligence police and charged with being informants for the CIA. They were released by sympathetic Iraqi soldiers last week, Hamid said.
He and his two brothers, Majeed and Shakeer, have cigarette burns on their wrists, the bottoms of their feet and their inner thighs. He pointed out dried blood stains on the cement floor of several jail cells. ''The interrogators kept telling me, 'Admit it, you work for the Americans, don't you?' '' Hamid said. ''Under Saddam, you were found guilty whether or not there was any evidence against you.''
Most of the five-story building has been demolished by U.S.-led airstrikes. Steel beams and parts of concrete walls cover the floors. Furniture, files and pictures have been burned beyond recognition.
Underground prison
Several other buildings on the grounds were left relatively intact. Inside one building, there were files with the names and pictures of Iraq's military intelligence officers. There also were pictures of prisoners, many of whom had been tortured and killed.
Former prisoners at the facility here said they were kept in an underground prison adjacent to a pumphouse and near the jail. It was built by the Yugoslav government. The men said the prison contained nearly 400 jail cells. Iraqi soldiers who worked at the site confirm their description.
U.S. Special Forces, however, investigated the site last week and said they found no evidence of a hidden prison there. Relatives of several missing Iraqis said the forces searched the basement of the main headquarters, not the site they had recommended.
Saturday, former prisoners and Iraqi soldiers said they heard screams of ''help'' from men who were still there. Several soldiers who tried to enter the underground prison through a manhole said they found the area flooded and doors locked. Kanan Alwan, 41, who worked in the facility's administrative office, said the intelligence officers of the facility programmed the prison's computers, which control the water flow, so that the water level would exceed the height of the prison doors.
''They are drowning in there, and there's nothing we can do for them,'' Alwan said. ''The real criminals fled. But the innocents who probably did nothing wrong have been condemned to death.''
It was impossible to confirm whether prisoners had been left to die underground. But family members of the suspected prisoners, Iraqi soldiers and local residents worked furiously Saturday in an effort to free the men. They tried to shut off the water, break down the doors with hammers and dig holes with shovels and sticks.
By 10 a.m. Sunday, the screams had stopped. Many of the family members broke down and cried. Others fainted in despair. Some just walked away in anger.
''Saddam may be gone, but his final act was to murder more of his own people,'' Alwan said. ''Now I pray the murders will stop.''
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Those are the stories that people wanted to ignore. Those are the people that some wanted to leave under Saddam's rule.
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