Museum of horrors exhibits forms of torture practiced by Saddam
(Lebanon Daily Star)BAGHDAD: Gruesome instruments of torture and the personal effects of victims killed by henchmen of dictator Saddam Hussein haunt Iraqis five years after the fall of his brutal regime. The display, on show in Baghdad, is due to travel across the country in "tribute to the thousands of martyrs" murdered when Saddam was in power, former political prisoner Amed Naji al-Badawi said.
Badawi is on a committee of former Iraqi political prisoners who set up the exhibition in a makeshift museum of horrors on the banks of the Tigris River, in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyya.
Nooses hang from the ceiling, and a wooden coffin-like box containing a medieval-looking torture rack on which prisoners were pinned and stretched takes center stage.
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The display was set up to mark the 17th anniversary of the start of a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq on March 1, 1991, one day after Saddam's regime agreed to a truce with US-led coalition forces after its defeat in the first Gulf war.
I can't help but wonder if a similar 'museum' will be set up depicting the US torture committed in these wars. Also, what is the purpose of displaying Saddams' atrocities now?