The Iranians are documenting about 140 victims of Saddam a month. Who knows how many they are missing. This is what Iraqi children could look forward to:
Bland words, vivid images wait to nail Saddam’s crimes
March 18 2003
A nondescript building houses the documents that trace the repression of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Russell Skelton reports from Tehran.
The document was bland and bureaucratic. The yellowed pages listed the names of 500 deserters from the Iraqi army. Beneath the names was a faded signature, a date and the crude official stamp of a general.
For opponents of Saddam Hussein, 1991 was the worst of years. What started out as a mass uprising against the dictator by Iraqis in 14 provinces ended in the systematic slaughter of thousands.
For the hapless soldiers named in the document, punishment for switching sides was a bullet in the head.
The document I was shown told nothing of the horror, the pervasive fear of the deserters’ last moments. It did not reveal that the men were tortured and tormented. It did not describe how they were kicked, repeatedly beaten with rifle butts and summarily executed with a single round from a pistol.
That part was caught on video filmed by the executioners themselves, apparently unable to resist recording their presidential work. The footage, smuggled to Iran by a high-ranking defector, makes for shocking viewing. Men pleading for their lives, men with broken arms and men being beaten. President Saddam’s totalitarian state uncut.
“We have collected thousands of these documents,” said Mr al-Huoseyni, the softly spoken archivist at the Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq.
“Each day defectors bring us more material and each day we authenticate it and record the victims of Saddam Hussein. There are thousands of names. The people who died in the uprising, the Kurds who were gassed, the political prisoners who were tortured and murdered,” he said.
Mr al-Huoseyni works in a five-storey building in Tehran that serves as a focal point for many of the 250,000 Iraqis living in exile in Iran. It is here they come to report the crimes of the Saddam regime and establish the fate of missing friends and relatives. It is here that each alleged crime is meticulously recorded in grim detail for the day when President Saddam and his generals face the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
In one large room the walls are covered by ceiling-high shelves holding thousands of files. They are categorised: executions, torture, victims of chemical warfare and the murdered women and children.
“We have records of 600,000 executions and we estimate that 180,000 died in the uprising including the Marsh Arabs. The bombing of Halabja left 5000 dead,” Mr al-Huoseyni said.
There is a propagandist flavour to this archive of horrors. Horrific pictures of mutilated bodies have been stuck on to picture boards, turned into instant posters.
There are more disturbing videos from a hospital ward inside Iraq of torn-off limbs, people in panic, two little boys clutching their dead father, whom they believe is still alive. It is all intended to persuade, and it does.
For all his work Mr al-Huoseyni is not optimistic President Saddam will be brought to account. “Saddam will be killed before that happens. He will be killed by members of his own clan before the US soldiers get to him. The clan hates him, they will make sure they get him first.”
The centre has gathered evidence showing that President Saddam turned on his family when some of them tried to leave Iraq. “Some have never been seen since,” he said.
Mr al-Huoseyni was working in the oil industry when he fled to Iran four years ago after learning he was being watched by the secret police. He declines to say why he was targeted because he does not want to endanger his family.
Each month the centre issues a bulletin in Arabic on Iraq’s victims compiled from information from defectors, refugees and informants inside Iraq. The figures have been running at around 140 a month.