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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Forensic Experts Probe Kurdish Mass Grave |
| 2005-04-30 |
| A skull with pink and white dentures belongs to an old woman, investigators said. A skeleton nearby was that of a teenage girl, still clutching a brightly colored bag of possessions. The trenches full of the skeletons of Iraqi Kurds, still in their distinctive, colorful garb, buried where they fell after being shot dead nearly 20 years ago, bear witness to the brutality of the regime of Saddam Hussein. International forensic experts this week examined a mass grave site in Samawa, on the Euphrates River, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, collecting evidence to prosecute Saddam and his top lieutenants for the mass killings of ethnic Kurds and Shiites during his more than 30 years in power. Many of those buried in the 18 trenches were believed to be Kurds killed in 1987 and 1988 during the Anfal campaign, said Gregg Nivala, from the U.S. government's Regime Crimes Liaison Office. "These were not combatants," he said. "They were women and children." During Anfal, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed or expelled from northern Iraq. The campaign included the gruesome 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. The Saddam regime was carrying out a program of removing Kurds from the northern homeland and replacing them with Arabs. Many of the Kurdish victims were buried in Iraq's central and southern desert. Outgoing Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin, himself a Kurd, said half a million people perished and 182,000 are missing. "We must know what happened (and deal with) collective memory, so we can do justice, rather than revenge," Amin said. The first 100 remains of an estimated 1,500 at the site would be used to certify cause of death, the identity of the victims and their origins, the investigators said. Identification cards found on as many as 15 percent of the victims link them to Kurdish villages in the north of the country. The clothing reinforces that those found in the graves were Kurds, Nivala said. Many were wearing their best clothes, or multiple layers, as if told they would be relocating, he said. Saddam and Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali" are the main defendants facing charges for the Anfal campaign. Investigators described the mass graves as evidence of "a widespread and systematic crime, committed over a long time, we think with the knowledge and direction of high-level members of the regime." At least some things were known about the mass graves and those buried there, the investigators said. Sixty-three percent of the victims were children or teens under 18 years of age. Ten were clearly infants. It may have been a rainy day when they were shot dead, sinking into the mud after they were struck down. They were killed with bursts of fire from AK-47s, the Russian-designed automatic rifle. Amin said the ongoing insurgency, fueled largely by disenchanted Sunni Arabs and ex-Baathists, was hampering investigations. "The same people that did this are the same people that want to stop me doing this (investigation)," he told reporters. No date has been set for the trials of Saddam, captured in December 2003, and 11 of his senior aides. Chief investigating judge Raid Juhi, who oversaw Saddam's court appearance in July last year, said the Iraqi Special Tribunal had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses in connection with the Anfal campaign. "Every judge working on the case, if he finds any evidence against an accused, can interview that accused," he said. Some of the accused were being "cooperative" he said, without elaborating. Amin said he wanted to government to contribute five percent of oil revenues to compensate Saddam's victims. "Compassion is not sufficient," he said. "Something tangible needs to be done for the victims of Saddam Hussein's regime." Send the exhumation bill to the Belgians. |
| Posted by:ed |