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Iraq-Jordan
Hostage clues emerge from Fallujah safe houses
2004-11-22
In one house hung a black banner with the words "One God and Jihad" and a distinctive yellow sun, terrifyingly familiar as the backdrop to videotaped beheadings by the group of that name. In another house there was a wire cage large enough to hold a human and a wall marked with Arabic writing and what appears to be a fingerprint in dried blood. Before the doors to these houses in Falluja were thrown open to two reporters on Sunday, soldiers and intelligence officers had carried away other items from them, handcuffs, shackles, militant propaganda, bayonets, and knives - crusted with what looked like blood and resembling the ones used in the beheadings. A detailed photograph-catalog of the items was shown to the reporters.

American and Iraqi government officials have long said that Falluja was a center of the Iraqi insurgency and a depot where militants held hostages with impunity before the American-led invasion two weeks ago. A tour of the two houses on Sunday represented the first time that American journalists saw direct evidence of the places where the hostages may have been imprisoned and, in some cases, killed in videotaped executions. Even so, there is no way to know for now exactly what happened here. The houses were discovered only a few days ago, and forensic investigators have not yet done DNA testing, analyzed the catalogued items that were removed, or compared this setting with the videos. So it cannot be said for certain that these were the last rooms that foreign or Iraqi hostages saw. But both locations were found through Iraqi informants, one of them someone who said that he had been held hostage in the house with the black banner, American investigators said. They quoted the informant as saying he had heard the voices of at least three hostages in neighboring rooms, including one he believed to be that of Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer decapitated in early October.

The houses are among almost 20 sites discovered over the past two weeks in Falluja where American and Iraqi military officers contend that atrocities were committed. Maj. Jim West, an intelligence officer with the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said the sites included houses where Western hostages appear to have been held and others where insurgents tortured or killed residents to help enforce their rule in the city, some of them basement rooms with bloody handprints on the wall.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#4  Graphics keep getting better and better. Nice one, Fred.
Posted by: lex   2004-11-22 7:20:40 PM  

#3  Nice graphic! You just know your Uncle Sam is either a mechanic or a plumber with attiude!
Posted by: Shipman   2004-11-22 7:11:11 PM  

#2  I can think of a few individuals who ought to be given a compulsory guided tour of these establishments, and others who should be sent urging invitations. Compulsory for journos like Robert "Allawi killed Margaret Hassan" Fisk (if he ever dares return to Iraq), and other journalists (especially those from Arabic news organisations); invitations for those politicians the world over who demand the coalition pulls out of Iraq before the job's done.
Posted by: Glum T Roll   2004-11-22 10:05:04 AM  

#1  So now with the MSM and the Arab media get a "clue"? Will they FINALLY understand the nature of this beast we are fighting?

Yeah, sure...
Posted by: RMcLeod   2004-11-22 1:21:28 AM  

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