Severely edited for brevity--go to the article for full story.
Abdullah Alkhuzai has seen himself on American TV several times this week, and each time it makes him wince. There he is, at the age of 20, sitting on the desert ground in southern Iraq, hands tied behind his back, trying not to look at the dead bodies all around him and wondering if he will be next. The 1991 footage has been playing on network news as a macabre souvenir of the crumbling Baathist regime. It shows Ali Hassan al-Majid and his henchmen beating Shiite opponents of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. Majid, a cousin of Saddam, was nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for his gassing of Kurdish civilians in 1988. The captors punch the bound men, kick and stomp them and, in some versions, put rifle barrels to their heads, all with the casual air of tormentors who have done this many times before. |