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| Iraq |
| Museum of Saddam's Torture Chambers |
| 2005-12-01 |
| It is a most startling image: a life-sized figure of a Kurdish rebel hanging by his wrists from a metal hook, his arms bound behind his back -- a position intended to use the prisoner's weight to dislocate his shoulders. He is dressed in the traditional Kurdish "sharwal" baggy pants and his shirt is partly untucked. Two electric alligator clips are attached to his earlobes from where wires run to a green hand-cranked electrical generator on a metal desk. His face is frozen in a moment of agony. The room is paneled in wood to muffle his screams. It is only a museum display. But before 1991, what happened in this room was all too real for the Kurds who dared to oppose the regime of Saddam Hussein. This compound of cinderblock buildings in the northern Iraq city of Sulaymaniyah was once one of the most feared places in the region. Known as Red Security, it was the northern headquarters for Saddam's military intelligence. "There were many kinds of torture," says Nabaz Mamhoud, a translator at the museum. "Some of them were executed or slaughtered by Saddam Hussein; some of them were imprisoned for the rest of their lives. The other people were kept in jails while security forces of Saddam Hussein tortured them in the most severe way." More at the link |
| Posted by:RG |