Posted on 05/14/2003 4:33:56 PM PDT by GRRRRR
3,000 Bodies Exhumed at Iraq Mass Grave AP
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer
MAHAWEEL, Iraq - Body after body, villagers are exhuming the remains of neighbors and loved ones killed after a 1991 Shiite revolt against Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). After nine days of digging, locals said Wednesday about 3,000 sets of remains had been uncovered, including some of people who had apparently been buried alive.
AP Photo
Bodies Exhumed at Iraq Mass Grave (AP Video) Premium Video: Mass Grave (Platinum - fee)
Latest news: · Iraqis Relive Past Horrors as U.S. Promises Security Reuters - 19 minutes ago · US forces to use more "muscle" to restore order in Baghdad: Rumsfeld AFP - 21 minutes ago · US seeks to speed Iraq food aid, freeze Saddam's looted cash AFP - 49 minutes ago Special Coverage
The mass grave in Mahaweel, 60 miles south of Baghdad, is the largest found in Iraq (news - web sites) since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam's Baath Party government last month. Rights groups expect hundreds more to be found in coming months.
"The joy of Saddam Hussein's downfall is over. Now we are thinking about our relatives and the crimes that were committed upon them," said Rafed Husseini, a doctor leading the group of men doing the digging.
Across Iraq, in fields and on hillocks, families are gathering to excavate sites they couldn't even approach while Saddam was in power. They pick through the bones for a thread of familiar clothing, an identification card, any clue to their identity.
On Wednesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch said a secret cemetery containing numbered graves of more than 1,000 prisoners executed by Saddam's government had been located 25 miles north of Baghdad, in the village of Muhammad Sakran.
Two days earlier, Iraqis pulled bodies from a newly discovered mass grave near Basra, the country's second-largest city. That site in southern Iraq was believed to contain remains of about 150 Shiite Muslims killed by Saddam's regime after a rebellion in 1999.
But nowhere has the ground disgorged such mass heartbreak as it has in Mahaweel.
Consider Fadhel al-Buzayri. A 21-year-old soldier in the Iraqi army, he was picked up by military security as he stood outside his home in the nearby village of Mat'hiya on the night of April 28, 1991. In the kitchen, his mother was making tea.
"They didn't even let him come inside to say goodbye to us," said the mother, Samira al-Shumari. "We thought they took him to his unit."
Five days later, his father, Salman al-Buzayri, went looking for him at his unit northeast of Baghdad. The son was not there, nor was he in prison.
When the young man was not among thousands of prisoners freed in a general amnesty late last year, al-Buzayri's last dim hope was gone. He knew his son was dead.
On Wednesday, a volunteer read out the names of the remains identified so far. Fadhel al-Buzayri was not among them. "We will wait for them to dig more bodies," his father said. "There are many graves in Iraq."
Then his wife began calling out their son's name and he started crying quietly.
"Our tears are cheap, O Saddam," moaned Um Khaled, sitting nearby and looking for her son.
A tattered green identity card flapped in the wind, the picture faded and only the number, 764059, visible. Around it was chaos: mounds of earth, barbed wire fences, bulldozers and hundreds of anguished onlookers hoping for answers watched from behind barbed-wire barriers as remains were pulled from the field, and wrapped in plastic bags and muddy sheets. Some had tufts of long hair attached — probably women, officials said.
Many of the onlookers were weeping, and some chanted: "There is no God but Allah, and the Baath (Party) is the enemy of Allah" — a play on the traditional Islamic profession of faith, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the prophet of Allah." Several women held pictures of missing loved ones. Men and women sifted through the plastic bags, searching for clues.
"We can tell from their clothes," one man said.
About half the bodies remain unidentified. The rest have been identified mainly through documents found with the remains, Husseini said.
"About 20 percent were buried alive, because they had no bullet wounds, but their hands were tied and they were blindfolded," said Amer al-Shumari, who works for the governor's office in Hillah.
U.S. Marines, who arrived Wednesday to secure the site, provided water to the grieving families.
"We can take this evidence and present it to a future Iraqi judiciary," said Capt. David Romley of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "They want to excavate the site themselves."
But Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch criticized the American-led administration for not sending forensic experts to Hillah. He said using bulldozers to exhume remains would destroy evidence and make it difficult to bring perpetrators to justice.
"It's an absolutely shameful failure on the part of the U.S. government," Bouckaert said Wednesday at the scene.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the U.S. response, noting that the military was trying to contain looting and other lawlessness in Baghdad.
"We're finding mass graves, thousands of human beings that were killed by that government," he said Wednesday. "What should we do? Would you rather have a policeman here or someone down there guarding those graves?"
Bouckaert said at least 200,000 people disappeared in Iraq during the past two decades, and human rights groups are tracking suspected locations of many other mass grave sites across the country.
Sukna al-Jbouri, who stood beside the barbed wire, said she had come in search of her son Hilal, who was 19 when he was arrested by soldiers in 1991.
"I was walking with my son in the street, and the army came and picked him up," she said as she wept. "I tried to stop them but they took him. ... What could I do?"
I'd like to take all those left wing extremists, Garafolo and her ilk, over there and have THEM exhume those bodies.
Radio reports in Chicago today are saying there may be upwards of 11,000 murdered Iraqi's in mass graves across the country.
What do you say to that, Danny Glover?
The current omission of outrage by the Peace Protestors is also quite amazing...instead, they harp on whining about "when are we going to see the WMD"...huh, huh huh??? They turn a blind eye to the evidence we are gathering from Mr. Bomb, Doctor Bacteria, Mrs. Anthrax etc.
Instead, they are starting to bloviate about the Saudi bombings in Riyadh--being all Bush's fault...
I'd like to drag them all by the scruff of their necks and shove their faces into one of those pits of death. Make them breath deeply, the stench of death filling their nostrils and then watch them retch and choke on their bile as it rises up in their throats...then watch them, on their knees, tears streaming down their faces, admit that they were wrong. I want them to admit "We didn't know..." just like the German populace that lived around the Nazi concentration camps and were forced to bury the thousands of dead the Allies found there.
Oh, wait, I forgot, being a leftist means you never, ever, ever have to admit to being wrong...or sorry.
The weasels in France and Germany have many, many questions to answer, but I'm afraid we'll never get the answers from them. What did THEY know and when did THEY know it?
Our country and WE THE PEOPLE are going to have an election in 18 months. WE THE PEOPLE have an opportunity to turn out the Demorat WHINERS in ever greater numbers...let's be sure we do it!
GRRRRR
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