Proof of US orchestration of death squads’ killings in Iraq

[CGowen]

By Max Fuller
Online Journal Guest Writer


Mar 22, 2007, 01:39


Probably everyone remembers the discovery of the Jadiriyah detention facility in November 2005. US troops were reported to have uncovered the prison in their hunt for a missing person, only to discover some 170 detainees in horrific conditions, many of them clearly the victims of obscene tortures. Although it was admitted that the facility belonged to the Interior Ministry and that the detainees were held by a secretive Interior Ministry force known as the Special Investigations Unit, the story was quickly shuffled away as yet another example of the work of Shiite militiamen, in this instance, as was the vogue at that time, the Badr Brigade <1>.

Myriad promises were forthcoming both from the US and Iraqi governments that investigations would be rapidly carried out and better supervision would in the future be applied to Iraqi-run detention facilities (for instance, the Iraqi government assured the world that a ministerial level investigation would rapidly be carried out, while US officials promised a legal team to go through the detainees’ files and a US embassy spokesman stated that Justice Department and FBI officers would provide technical assistance).

Of course, given the scale of the abuse (flayings, burnings, drillings, etc.) and the proximity of the perpetrators to the Iraqi government (by dint of working for the Interior Ministry as well as by any possible Badr-SCIRI links) and to the US occupation which had, after all, established them (as numerous reports have amply documented, e.g., Knight Ridder, 9 May 2005), such investigations were grossly less than what was urgently required -- a full and public criminal investigation by independent international agencies. Even these limited promises came to nothing, as the UN Human Rights Office in Iraq recently highlighted. What we have actually seen is neither investigation nor prosecutions, despite the fact that Jadiriyah lies at the heart of the state of fear that Iraq undeniably now is.

In October last year, I had the privilege to interview one of the victims of that terrible abuse, the distinguished former professor of Pedagogy at Baghdad University, Tareq Samarree, who had been seized from his home in March 2005 by plain-clothes Interior Ministry personnel without charge. Professor Samarree, who provided a horrific first-hand account of the torture that he had suffered as well as details of others who had died and of the disappearance of his son within the Iraqi detention system, never had sight of any hint of judicial process nor any access to the outside world.

What made Professor Samarree’s story most striking were the details of his release. Professor Samarree’s physical condition was so bad when the American soldiers discovered the facility that he, along with around a dozen other detainees, was instantly taken to a local hospital. Here, he and his companions remained without access to lawyers, journalists, officials or even a telephone. In fact, it quickly became clear that these victims of torture were to be returned to Iraqi detention. Professor Samarree, another of whose sons lives in the United States, was fortunate to be able to persuade an American solider to take pity on him and assist him and two of his companions to escape. The last words the soldier said to Professor Samarree were, “Run, run. Don’t look back!”

Within days, Professor Samarree had arranged for himself and his family to flee the country. He is now in Europe, where he is claiming political asylum.

The full details of Professor Samarree’s story and a detailed account of the US-built Iraqi intelligence apparatus are contained in the article Ghosts of Jadiriyah, published by the BRussells Tribunal. It should be noted that the story was offered on the one-year anniversary of discovery of the Jadiryah facility to a range of mainstream media publications, including New Yorker, New Statesman, the Independent, The Big Issue, as well as to the radical left publication Z Mag. Of them all, only the New Statesmen and Z Mag were courteous enough even to reply to affirm their rejection. It seemed that Professor Samarree’s remarkable story and any further interest in Jadiriyah were simply off the agenda.

But Jadiriyah, with its ghosts and its horror, will not go away.


.....................

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1878.shtml

[happydreams]

1. K&R.

[happydreams]

2. Kick

[LibertyorDeath]

3. Thank You for this.

When they made John "Death Squad" Negroponte Ambassador to Iraq in 2004
this is what I thought was coming.

This is Sickening.....

[yurbud]

4. most of our troops want to do right and it sounds like one of them did here.