Baghdad official who exposed executions flees
Jonathan Steele, Thursday March 2, 2006, The Guardian
Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed."The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills," said John Pace, the Maltese UN official. The killings had been happening long before the bloodshed after last week's bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra.
Mr Pace, whose contract in Iraq ended last month, said many killings were carried out by Shia militias linked to the industry ministry run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).
Mr Pace said records, supported by photographs, came from Baghdad's forensic institute, which passed them to the UN. The Baghdad morgue has been receiving 700 or more bodies a month. The figures peaked at 1,100 last July - many showing signs of torture.
Reports of government-sponsored death squads have sparked fear among many prominent Iraqis, prompting a rise in the number leaving the country. Mr Pace said the morgue's director had received death threats after he reported the murders. "He's out of the country now," said Mr Pace, adding that the attribution of the killings to government-linked militias did not come from Dr Bakir.
"There are other sources for that. Some militias are integrated with the police and wear police uniforms," he said. "The Badr brigade [Sciri's armed wing] are in the police and are mainly the ones doing the killing. They're the most notorious."
Some Iraqis accuse the Mahdi army militia, linked to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, of seizing and killing people. But Mr Pace said: "I'm not as sure of the Mahdi army as I am of the others."
Death Squads and Iraqi police: two sides of the same coin.
Dirk Adriaensens (BRussells Tribunal) and Isam Rasheed (Baghdad) 03 March 2006
The BRussels Tribunal recently received evidence of 2 such cases, where the Iraqi police was clearly involved in “Death Squad” activities. Acting under the protection of the Ministry of Interior and the Industry Ministry, they are unscrupulous torturers and killers. We had doubts about publishing the story, because the pictures are very disturbing. But keeping Robert Fisks’ words in mind: “if the mainstream media would publish photos of the real war, as I’ve seen it, nobody would support this war”, we decide to make these cases public.
1- His name was Khalid Waleed Ahmed. He was Sunni,36 years old, married and having three kids, the youngest one was only 4 months years old. He was an engineer, working for a private company, and he lived in the Ur area in Baghdad.
Thursday 23 February 2006 at 6:00 pm when he was having dinner, his house was raided by several men dressed in black. They came with many cars, and some of these cars were from the Iraqi police (as his brother said). They arrested him and also broke all the doors of his house. After three days they found him in the morgue in Baghdad.
Warning: extremely graphic photos: picture1 picture2 picture3
2- His name was Wa'ad Jajim Mohammed, Sunni, 46 years old, married and having three kids. He lived in the Cairo area in Baghdad. he got arrested on Saturday 25 February 2006 in his house at 4:45 am. His family found his dead body in the morgue after two days.
Warning: extremely graphic photos: picture1 picture2 picture3
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