Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Secrets of Iraq's death chamber

The Indipendent
Secrets of Iraq's death chamber
Prisoners are being summarily executed in the government's high-security 
detention centre in Baghdad. Robert Fisk reports
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its 
shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the 
revelations come.
The Independent has learnt that secret executions are being carried out in 
the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's "democratic" government.
The hangings are carried out regularly - from a wooden gallows in a small, 
cramped cell - in Saddam Hussein's old intelligence headquarters at 
Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called 
Baghdad's "high-security detention facility" but most of the victims - there 
have been hundreds since America introduced "democracy" to Iraq - are said 
to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own 
captives.
The secrets of Iraq's death chambers lie mostly hidden from foreign eyes but 
a few brave Western souls have come forward to tell of this prison horror. 
The accounts provide only a glimpse into the Iraqi story, at times 
tantalisingly cut short, at others gloomily predictable. Those who tell it 
are as depressed as they are filled with hopelessness.
"Most of the executions are of supposed insurgents of one kind or another," 
a Westerner who has seen the execution chamber at Kazimiyah told me. "But 
hanging isn't easy." As always, the devil is in the detail.
"There's a cell with a bar below the ceiling with a rope over it and a bench 
on which the victim stands with his hands tied," a former British official, 
told me last week. "I've been in the cell, though it was always empty. But 
not long before I visited, they'd taken this guy there to hang him. They 
made him stand on the bench, put the rope round his neck and pushed him off. 
But he jumped on to the floor. He could stand up. So they shortened the 
length of the rope and got him back on the bench and pushed him off again. 
It didn't work."
There's nothing new in savage executions in the Middle East - in the 
Lebanese city of Sidon 10 years ago, a policeman had to hang on to the legs 
of a condemned man to throttle him after he failed to die on the noose - but 
in Baghdad, cruel death seems a speciality.
"They started digging into the floor beneath the bench so that the guy would 
drop far enough to snap his neck," the official said. "They dug up the tiles 
and the cement underneath. But that didn't work. He could still stand up 
when they pushed him off the bench. So they just took him to a corner of the 
cell and shot him in the head."
The condemned prisoners in Kazimiyah, a Shia district of Baghdad, are said 
to include rapists and murderers as well as insurgents. One prisoner, a 
Chechen, managed to escape from the jail with another man after a gun was 
smuggled to them. They shot two guards dead. The authorities had to call in 
the Americans to help them recapture the two. The Americans killed one and 
shot the Chechen in the leg. He refused medical assistance so his wound went 
gangrenous. In the end, the Iraqis had to operate and took all the bones out 
of his leg. By the time he met one Western visitor to the prison, "he was 
walking around on crutches with his boneless right leg slung over his 
shoulder".
In many cases, it seems, the Iraqis neither keep nor release any record of 
the true names of their captives or of the hanged prisoners. For years the 
Americans - in charge of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad - 
did not know the identity of their prisoners. Here, for example, is new 
testimony given to The Independent by a former Western official to the 
Anglo-US Iraq Survey Group, which searched for the infamous but mythical 
weapons of mass destruction: "We would go to the interrogation rooms at Abu 
Ghraib and ask for a particular prisoner. After about 40 minutes, the 
Americans brought in this hooded guy, shuffling along, shackled hands and 
feet.
"They sat him on a chair in front of us and took off his hood. He had a big 
beard. We asked where he received his education. He repeatedly said 'Mosul'. 
Then he said he'd left school at 14 - remember, this guy is supposed to be a 
missile scientist. We said: 'We know you've got a PhD and went to the 
Sorbonne - we'd like you to help us with information about Saddam's missile 
project'. But I said to myself : 'This guy doesn't know anything 'bout 
fucking missiles.' Then it turned out he had a different name from the man 
we'd asked for, he'd been picked up on the road by the Americans four months 
earlier, he didn't know why. So we said to the Americans: 'Wrong gentleman!' 
So they put the shackles on him and took him back to his cell and after 20 
or 30 minutes, they'd bring someone else. We'd ask him where he went to 
school and he told us he had never been to school.
"Wrong person again. It was a complete farce. The incompetence of the US 
military was astounding, criminal. Eventually, of course, they found the 
right guy and brought him in and took his hood off. He was breathing 
heavily, overweight, pudgy, disoriented, a little bit scared."
On this occasion, the Americans had found the right man. The British and 
American investigators asked the guards to remove the man's shackles, which 
they did - but then they tied one of the man's legs to the floor. Yes, he 
had a PhD.
Again, the official's testimony: "We went through his history, what he'd 
worked on - he was obviously just a minor functionary in one of Saddam's 
missile programmes. Iraqi scientists didn't have the knowledge how to make 
nuclear missiles nor did they have the financial support necessary. It just 
remained in the dreams of Saddam."
The scientist-prisoner in Abu Ghraib miserably told his captors that he'd 
been arrested by the Americans after they'd knocked on his front door in 
Baghdad and found two Kalashnikov rifles a woman's hijab, verses from the 
Koran and, obviously of interest to his captors, "physics and missile 
textbooks on his bookshelves." But this supposedly valuable prisoner was 
never charged or previously interviewed even though he admitted he was a 
rocket scientist.
"I don't know what happened to him," the former official told me. "I tried 
to tell the UK and the US military that we've arrested this man but that 
he's got a wife, children, a family. I said that by locking up this one 
innocent person, you've got 50 men radicalised overnight. No, I don't know 
what happened to him."
For many of the investigators working for the Anglo-American authorities in 
Baghdad, the trial for the crime for which the Iraqi dictator was himself 
subsequently hanged was a fearful experience that ultimately ended in 
disgust. Through captured documents, they could see the dark, inner workings 
of Saddam's secret police. The idea of the Saddam trial was less to bring 
members of the former regime to justice than to show Iraqis how justice and 
the rule of law should operate.
"It was exhilarating to see Saddam being cross-examined," one of the court 
investigators said. "The low point was when he was executed. What drove me 
on was seeing how Saddam dealt with his victims - I was looking at a 
microcosm of all the deaths that had taken place in Iraq. But when he was 
executed, it was done in such a savage way."
Saddam Hussein was hanged in the same "secure" unit at Kazimiyah where Mr 
al-Maliki's people, in an echo of Saddamite Baathist terror, now hang their 
victims.
Iraq The death penalty
*The death penalty in Iraq was suspended after Saddam Hussein was deposed in 
2003. It was reinstated by the interim government in August 2004.
*The United Nations, the European Union and international human rights 
organisations all spoke out against the reintroduction.
*At the time, the government claimed the death penalty was a necessary 
measure until the country had stabilised. Amnesty International claims that 
"the extent of violence in Iraq has increased rather than diminished, 
clearly indicating that the death penalty has not proved to be an effective 
deterrent."
*Saddam, left, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief 
judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were hanged at the end of 2006 for their part in 
the killings of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982. 
Illicit videos of all three executions later became public. Saddam's body 
could be seen on a hospital trolley, his head twisted at 90 degrees. 
Barzan - Iraq's former intelligence chief -was decapitated by the noose. 
Officials said it was an accident.
*According to Amnesty, there were at least 33 executions reported in Iraq 
last year. About 200 people were estimated to have been sentenced to death. 

 shoulder".
Se l'attendibilità dell'intero articolo deve essere giudicata da
questo pezzo di fantachirurgia, siamo a posto...
Carlo "Jurassic Park"

questo pezzo di fantachirurgia, siamo a posto...
Ricorda una scena di "Harry Potter e La Camera dei Segreti": che sia quella 
la fonte?
-- 
"Il Basileus che siede a Costantinopoli vince sempre".
Kekaumenos. 

 ha scritto nel 
messaggio news:49004e2c$0$1082$4faf...@reader2.news.tin.it...
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Bella accopiata 

 ha scritto nel
messaggio news:49004e2c$0$1082$4faf...@reader2.news.tin.it...
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Bella accopiata 

 Bella accopiata
Eri tu ad aver postato quell'articolo in cui si descriveva un servizio 
segreto alleato degli USA che bolliva vivo un dissidente in un immenso 
pentolone pieno d'acqua (collegato ad una piccola presa a muro: questi 
sadici dei servizi sono persone molto pazienti)? O era giovannino manolesta?


 ha scritto nel 
messaggio news:49005d5e$0$1080$4faf...@reader2.news.tin.it...
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Quel servizio č di uno degli inviati piů stimati e esperti della stampa 
mondiale . E ricorda Abu Graib, Guntanamo e che la tortura č stata 
autorizzata da Bush, oltre agli episodi emersi e blandamente puniti di 
sadismo dei marine.  Ma pensala come ti pare, sono problemi tuoi dei quali 
non mette conto discutere. Ma ripeto: Dio li fa  e poi li accoppia. 

 non mette conto discutere. Ma ripeto: Dio li fa  e poi li accoppia.
Ma io non dubito che vi sia stato uso di tortura. Dubito che estraggano 
l'osso di una gamba a una persona per poi lasciarlo andare in giro con la 
gamba svuotata stile Herry Potter. .
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outis ha scritto:
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vero? il jurassico fascistone che avrebbe fucilato gli operai antifascisti
e il cretino balilla antola
-- 
visitate 
http://www.comunisti-italiani.it/frames/index.htm
 
http://www.larinascita.org
http://www.italia-cuba.it/associazione/associazione.htm
questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
http://www.newsland.it/news
 segnala gli abusi ad 
ab...@newsland.it

 manolesta?
qui rilevo riminiscenze di Alan Quatermain... ;-)) 

"Lord Curzon" <lord....@curzon.cur> ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:4900d112$0$1084$4faf...@reader1.news.tin.it...
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Allan. Ma mi sembra più una citazione da Shogun, di James  Clavell.
Il cattivissimo Kasigi Yabu.
Carlo "Jurassic Park" 

 sadismo dei marine.  
il fascistello antola federico ha la memoria cortissima ...
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 Kekaumenos.
Il dubbio è sempre doveroso. 

 Il dubbio č sempre doveroso.
Lodevole atteggiamento. Peccato che tu ti sia bevuto subito per vera la 
gamba svuotata e arrotolata sulla spalla.
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 Il cattivissimo Kasigi Yabu.
Presumo che non ricorresse a prese a muro. Mica puoi aspettare tre giorni 
che bolla il pentolone....
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Kasigi-sama avrebbe potuto farlo: gli piaceva bollire vivi i nemici a
lentissima morte e disponeva della pazienza orientale...
Gli mancava solo la presa di corrente.
Carlo "Jurassic Park"

Gli mancava solo la presa di corrente.
In quel caso si riscalda l'acqua alla vecchia maniera.
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 sadici dei servizi sono persone molto pazienti)? O era giovannino manolesta?
Ho appena finito di leggere—guarda i casi della vita—un racconto di
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk nel quale si descrivono con dovizia
di particolari gli effetti sulla fisiologia della lessatura. Ebbene,
doveste trovarvi nella condizione di essere bolliti, vi consiglio
"caldamente" di bere alla svelta quanta più acqua potete: il
soffocamento per edema carotideo è senz'altro la morte migliore che
possiate attendervi.
--
Baci,
Mony

possiate attendervi.
Su questo concordo. Ma il punto è che con la presa muro ci vuole un bel 
po'...
Oppure la CIA ha il tempo di aspettare tre giorni per le informazioni?
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 Oppure la CIA ha il tempo di aspettare tre giorni per le informazioni?
Sta' storia mi fa ricordare un episodio di Rat Man, "Operazione
Geode", nel quale una banda di geologi cattivi voleva distruggere il
mondo, per esempio sciogliendo i ghiacci polari con una candela... Può
darsi che alla CIA siano grandi fan di Ortolani.
--
Baci,
Mony

 mondo, per esempio sciogliendo i ghiacci polari con una candela
LOL

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:4900fd8a$0$1081$4faf...@reader2.news.tin.it...
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oh, I'm sorry :-) Comunque è un bellissimo libro che consiglio a tutti... 

 oh, I'm sorry :-) Comunque è un bellissimo libro che consiglio a tutti...
Parli di Shogun (bellissimo davvero) o dei romanzi di H.Rider Haggard con 
protagonista Allan Quatermain (godibili, ma di altro livello)?
Carlo "Jurassic Park" 

 Kekaumenos.
Io non ho bevuto proprio niente. Ma bisogna dubitare anche del proprio 
dubbio, soprattutto  quando riguarda le affermazioni di una persona esperta 
e stimata che ha smacherto varie nefandezze. E di fronte alle inequivocabili 
prove di sadismo già date dai militari USA riterrei quanto meno inopportuno 
e alquanto immorale fare lo spiritoso. Ma constato che finalmente ti trovi 
con i tuoi veri amici e nell'ambiente in cui ti senti a tuo agio. Nulla 
d'imprevisto, ma le conferme fanno sempre piacere. 

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:4902501f$0$40314$4faf...@reader5.news.tin.it...
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ho letto Allan Quatermain e le miniere di re Salomone...però per un patito 
di romanzi di avventura forse il mio giudizio è eccessivamente di parte ;-) 

Nulla d'imprevisto, ma le conferme fanno sempre piacere.
Povero outis, circondato dai cattivi fascisti che negano le sue sicurissime 
fonti.... una novella Cassandra... ;-DDD
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darsi che alla CIA siano grandi fan di Ortolani.
Devono esserci anche degli albi di Mr. No in proposito.
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