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| Iraq |
| U.S. Finds Alleged Iraq Torture Chamber |
| 2003-04-09 |
| U.S. Marines uncovered an apparent torture chamber Wednesday in a squalid and impoverished section of this southern Iraq city. A patrol found the small compound in northwestern Nasiriyah during a routine building search in which three American marines were wounded when they stepped on what was either an anti-personnel mine or an unexploded grenade. Marine Capt. Pete McAleer said the one-story building appeared to have been used by Iraqi police or Baath party security forces to torture prisoners, and to keep documents and identification cards for monitoring area residents. Some of the cards showed pictures of small children, although it was not clear why. "The records were very detailed. It looks a bit too much like Nazi Germany to me," said McAleer, touring the compound, which was surrounded by a wall that included hand-painted outlines of people and tanks to use for target practice. Deep inside the building, there was a small room with no natural light, with the floor strewn with clothing and medicines, much of which was burned in a fire. Inside one of the room's five tiny cells, all with heavy barred doors, a wire was connected to a small hand cranked generator and steel bar. Marines who first searched the building said it had also been connected to a steel chair in what appeared to be a primitive electric chair. "Who knows what they did with that steel rod," McAleer said. Lance Corporal James Jeffreys said that when he first saw the room it also had a type of wooden stock, designed so a rope could be wrapped around a prisoners neck, laced through holes in the wood, and then out through other holes that were used to bind their hands. "I believed it to be a police substation, but as soon as I got back in there I thought (of a torture chamber)," he said. McAleer believes that after Marines had checked the building, local residents set the blaze to get rid of the gruesome reminder of Saddam Hussein's regime. "We have seen this done before," he said. "Once the locals know it is safe, they will come in and destroy" such police and government compounds. Jeffreys said he also found photographs of badly burned human bodies scattered among documents strewn on the floor in other parts of the building. "From the position of the bodies, it looked like they could have been (burned) alive," said Jeffreys. Key documents and photographs that could be salvaged during the short initial search were turned over to superiors. I trust this is as upsetting as the limbless boy.... |
| Posted by:Mark IV |
| #5 Yes, pj, but eyewitness testimony is always suspect. It's better to have physical proof--something tangible and irrefutable. As Fmr. Russian Maj. puts it, their "own detailed notes of their destruction" in their own handwriting would be the best damning evidence we could hope for. |
| Posted by: Dar Steckelberg 2003-04-09 22:13:06 |
| #4 I hope they save the documentation, at least, for proof. What is it anyway with mass murderers and their love of detailed notes of their destruction? |
| Posted by: Former Russian Major 2003-04-09 21:27:25 |
| #3 Dar: We can bring in the survivors (if there are any) and their relatives. |
| Posted by: pj 2003-04-09 17:28:06 |
| #2 I don't like this "Once the locals know it is safe, they will come in and destroy" part. We need to save that evidence for war crime trials and, especially, to rub in the face of Micheal Moore, Martin Sheen, et al. |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-04-09 14:37:45 |
| #1 Ugh, please help with the link in the header... |
| Posted by: Mark IV 2003-04-09 14:28:37 |