Iraqi Mass Graves
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» Lawhawk - Interesting Contradiction
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn... - according to the WaPoThe U.S. and British investigators have been traveling widely in Iraq to find mass graves. Since the end of the war they have found more than 80 such sites, some containing thousands of corpses dug up by Iraqi volunteers.- that was on June 10. Why is the AP downplaying the number of mass graves uncovered in the preceding posting?Most of the bodies they have examined have been of people executed earlier in Hussein's reign, particularly in 1988, 1991 and 1998. The experts are compiling a list of sites so the graves can be fully exhumed with the help of international forensics experts.
But Hanson, a veteran forensic investigator of Bosnian war crimes, said he expected to find more graves containing bodies from recent executions. Hussein, he said, had "been doing this for 20 years. I don't think he suddenly stops. You might find it increases because he suddenly feels threatened. I'd imagine that's very likely."
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - The Mass Graves of al-Mahawil: The Truth Uncovered
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0503/-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Report on Iraqi Mass Graves
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/pdf/iraq_mass_...-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Update on mass grave, genocide, and mass killings by Saddam
Secrets of mass graves uncoveredA US-led team of investigators working in northern Iraq has discovered a mass grave containing hundreds of bodies, including that of an infant with a gunshot to the back of the head.This is the regime that useful idiots like ANSWER sought to protect and lined up blissfully ignorant individual to act as human shields to protect the regime against US and coalition actions. Killing fields - should remind readers of the killing fields in Cambodia. The Saddam regime was as bloody as all the other totalitarian regimes under Soviet influence - and used every means at his disposal.The skeletons of foetuses, children clutching toys and men apparently killed by machine-gun fire were amongst the dead found in nine trenches in a dry riverbed in the village of Hatra.
The investigators have been conducting what is believed to be the first scientific investigation of a mass grave as they look for evidence to use against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. They believe the dead may be Kurds killed between 1987 and 1988.
"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," said Greg Kehoe, an American working with the Iraqi Special Tribunal, an independent body looking for evidence of genocide and other atrocities linked to Saddam, who is expected to face trial next year.
"Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them."
"I have been doing grave sites for a long time, but I have never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason," Mr Kehoe, who was involved in the prosecution of Bosnian war criminals, said. "It's a perfect place for execution."
Conservative estimates put the number of people killed during Saddam's 24-year rule at 300,000, with US officials so far confirming 40 grave sites out of a possible 260.
Command Post has more on this, including similar reports from multiple sources.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Europeans purposefully slowing down recovery efforts
http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/0...Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein’s regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.The Europeans are putting their distaste of the death penalty ahead of the need for justice and seeing that the victims of Saddam's regime are heard and counted. The Europeans have a long history of dealing in death, so their refusal to fully assist in the efforts to uncover Saddam's atrocities strikes me as nothing more than political pandering.The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.
But, as we all know from the US presidential race, this is the same bunch whom Kerry is actively courting.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - 500 bodies uncovered in another mass grave
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...Allawi told Iraq's National Council in Baghdad that the grave was found near the city of Sulaimaniya in the autonomous Kurdish region in the northeast of the country, where Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s forces carried out atrocities in the late 1980s.So, that's at least 500 more souls who died at Saddam's hands that have been uncovered. Yet, there are still people defending his actions and claim that the US was wrong to act. Some of these same detractors of the war in Iraq are now clamoring for the US to act in the Sudan or Rwanda. If any of these detractors were consistent, they'd be applauding the US intervention in Iraq and using it as a model for future intervention - violate human rights, commit ethnic cleansing and genocide and your regime will be changed."Today a mass grave was discovered in the city of Sulaimaniya, with the initial number of 500 martyrs," he said.
Allawi gave no further details but residents living nearby said workers found the remains while preparing the ground for a new hospital near a highway in Debashan, north of Sulaimaniya.
Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights has sealed off the site, where its staff are working. The driver of a mechanical digger told Kurdish television about 900 bodies might be in the grave but it was too early to know how many were buried there.
Evidence gathered from mass graves is expected to form a central part of the trials of the former president and his top deputies, accused of war crimes and other crimes against humanity during their decades in power.
Allawi said some lieutenants would go on trial next week.
Saddam launched military offensives against the Kurds in the late 1980s and his forces used poison gas against the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.
Among those facing trial is Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged role in the gas attacks.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Thousand found in newly discovered mass graves
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/intern...The graves, discovered over the past three months, have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed by the continuing insurgency and the lack of qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial excavations have substantiated the accounts of witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.Forensic evidence from some graves will feature prominently in the trials of Mr. Hussein and the leaders of his government. The trials are to start this spring.
One of the graves, near Basra, in the south, appears to contain about 5,000 bodies of Iraqi soldiers who joined a failed uprising against Mr. Hussein's government after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Another, near Samawa, is believed to contain the bodies of 2,000 members of the Kurdish clad led by Massoud Barzani.
And yet, people still think that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was unjust, immoral, and unwise. The hundreds of thousands murdered by Saddam's regime would stand in silent contrast to the immorality of inaction on the part of the international community to stop the carnage imposed by Saddam on the Iraqi people.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Still more mass graves uncovered
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/00...More than 160,000 Kurds remain unaccounted for.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» Lawhawk - Prosecutors preparing for Saddam's trial - excavations continue
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/intern... - excavations of mass graves from the Anfal campaign continue. Upwards of 100,000 Kurds were killed by Saddam during his brutal rule.He will be tried, in part, on charges stemming from those murders.
A senior Iraqi court official has said the tribunal is planning to start the first trial of Mr. Hussein by late summer or early fall in a case that focuses on the killings of nearly 160 men from Dujail, a Shiite village north of Baghdad, after the former dictator survived an assassination attempt there.But American legal advisers say the Hatra grave holds a key to what is likely to be one of the broadest charges against Mr. Hussein - that he is responsible for the killing of as many as 100,000 Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980's, some in chemical-weapons attacks. They say those charges could be filed later this year, and Iraqi officials said last weekend that there could be up to 12 separate cases against Mr. Hussein and others. Each would require a separate trial, and multiple convictions could mean multiple death sentences for any defendant.
-- posted by Lawhawk
» suitewoman - Re: Thousand found in newly discovered mass graves
In response to Thousand found in newly discovered mass graves posted by Lawhawk:Appreciating the severity of the uncovering of mass graves as a reflection of Saddam Hussein's reign, it is a still a stretch of comparing apples to oranges as to why our country went to war in Iraq. It's like saying that that the end justifies the means, 'see Saddam really was a monster after all' and that makes it right for USA to have gone into Iraq committing our young to combat. Saddam is ousted now, yet the 'carnage' continues = 100,000 Iraqis dead, almost 1,700 reported American troops dead, 1,858 total Coalition troops dead, 12,762 wounded. I'd say this administration is busy making it's own carnage of lives. Upwards of 80 of our troops killed and injured in this past month alone.
Incidentally, Amnesty International has made its report on USA and it's archipelago prisons around the world. Not very reassuring in the 'might makes right' argument.
Mine have served in Iraq, are about to serve 2nd deployments in Iraq and I want them home. It has become senseless with no apparant plan of ending or exit = considerably more carnage this administration will administer for years to come.
-- posted by suitewoman
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