HumanRights

21 H u m a n R i g h t s Mass Graves of Hussein Regime USAID officers were among the first to visit Iraq’s mass grave sites. More than 270 sites have been reported. barefoot in the grave. There were many fami- lies. Some were in mourning. Some were cu- trace. Rumors of mass killings, shootings at the edge of mass graves, now proved horribly rious onlookers.” Spread out across the desert floor of Iraq’s largest military base was a scene of horror: true. What Mann found was one of the first of Iraq’s mass graves. By January, 2004, 270 parents, wives, brothers weeping over the white cloth bundles that contained all that was left of their loved ones: bones, an identi- suspected mass grave sites had been reported, of which 53 were confirmed. Some graves hold a few dozen bodies; others go on for AID went down to Hillah to investigate some sites suspected of concealing mass In early in May, 2003, Sloan Mann of US- graves. “I went there two days after the mass grave was discovered,” Mann said. “When I showed up, people were randomly ty card or an occasional watch or piece of jewelry. Seized from their beds in the night at hun- hundreds of meters, row after row of bodies. No one knows how many dead these graves hold. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said dreds of Kurdish villages in the 1980s, or rounded up in broad daylight by Saddam’s troops in the Shiite cities of the south in the the toll is 400,000, while Human Rights Watch said 290,000. Mann was one of the abuse prevention of- digging through the site... Children walked 1990s, most victims had vanished without a ficers USAID sent to Iraq in the spring of 2003 Iraqis and U.S. aid workers Thomas Hartwell Thomas Hartwell dig up the first of hundreds of thousands of bodies left in mass graves by Saddam Hus- sein’s regime. Iraqis search for relatives and friends among victims found in a mass grave in against the Iraqi govern- ment. Wrapped in white cloth, they lie in a nearby Musayib, 75 kilometers southwest of Baghdad. The victims are thought to be from the 1991 uprising youth center as they are identified by relatives on the bases of identity documents, clothing or jewelry found with the bones. Thomas Hartwell An Iraqi woman grieves over the remains of two family members, found in a mass grave site at Musayib. 22 Human Rights to prevent revenge killings, attacks on vulner- able people or other abuse in the wake of the “Above all,if people in Iraq and There are three cate- ● Humanitarian exhu- conflict. Within a month of his visit to Hillah—he would later evaluate sites at Radwaniya around the world hope to learn from the crimes of the past, the mass graves of Iraq must be documented,reported and gories of mass graves: Prison, Musayib, and at three locations around Mahaweel—the Agency was making grants to help Iraqis preserve the sites and ex- never forgotten or denied.” hume the bodies for proper identification. Agency grants were made to the Free Pris- oners Association, the Lawyers Association Andrew S. Natsios, USAID Administrator ● Over-run sites: dis- turbed by people seeking the remains of their miss- ing relatives and friends. Since they are already dug up and it would be hard to stop people from complet- ing their searches, USAID trains Iraqis to help the community emotionally and to collect whatever in- formation is possible. mation sites: Profession- als teach Iraqis how to put the bones together, identi- fy remains and determine how victims died. and human rights groups to buy computers and compile lists of the missing, to track sus- pected grave sites, link victims to their fami- ● Full criminal investi- gation sites: Between eight and 20 sites are to be selected for use in the Iraqi Special Tribunal established by the Iraqi Governing Council to try cases of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. lies, and safeguard documents relating to the torture, disappearance, and execution of hun- dreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Thomas Hartwell DART abuse prevention of- ficer Jean Geran inspects mass grave near Basrah. Human Rights Watch esti- mates the site may contain several hundred people. Sally Hodgson/Dept.of State Iraqis identify the remains of a victim from a mass grave in Musayib. Some 270 mass grave sites have been report- ed throughout the country. Thomas Hartwell A man holds out an ID card found in a mass grave in Musayib, 50 miles southwest of Baghdad.