Crossing Continents – Iraq DOOR SLAMS: Tim: We’ve just arrived at the Free Prisoners Committee, a large, once rather grand villa on the banks of the Tigris and you can see already what happens here because the walls are lined with pictures of young men who were taken away by Saddam Hussein’s regime. And if you go in – we’re going to be searched here at the door – thank you - the courtyard here under the sun is absolutely full of metal drawers taken from ransacked buildings around Baghdad. This is the place where hundreds of thousands of documents where brought by lorry load in the days immediately after the fall of Baghdad by volunteers who themselves have been victims of the regime. There’s masses of people here all looking for some kind of information about their relatives. Ahmed, what are we going to do? Ahmed: I’m going to ask about my brother who get arrested in 1981. In 1989 they told me he’s executed but I didn’t get his body. Tim: Well, there’s a queue of men here in front of a computer . Ahmed: Yes, indeed I’m going to join the queue to be with those people in order to find the name. Tim: Well while we’re waiting in the queue let me just introduce you to the listeners. I’m with Ahmed al-Tamimi. He’s a big rather serious man with a black moustache and he’s one of countless Iraqis who are at last free to try and discover what happened to people they loved who disappeared during Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. Documents, corpses and unbearable memories are now being uncovered all over this tortured country. In today’s “Crossing Continents” I’ll be asking whether all this evidence can be used effectively to bring the henchmen of the old regime to justice. While we’re waiting Ahmed, let me just ask you about your case. How exactly did your brother disappear ? Ahmed: My brother used to be an instructor of a technical institute. He went one Saturday as usual to go to work and during the week one of his friends told us that two men, civilian men come in, and ask him please could you come for two minutes and they know that they are intelligence and after that he disappeared. And from that day which is in 1981, November 27th until today we didn’t hear anything about him. When those two civilians come in and ask you we need you for two minutes that means you’re going to disappear forever - this is the way in Iraq. Tim: And how long after that was it before you dared to go to the authorities to ask what had happened ? Ahmed: My dad didn’t go to the authorities because if you go and ask about your son they will go and arrest you so we ask in our way, we ask many people many friends and we know that he get arrested but no official way to tell you that your brother has been arrested. Tim: Well it’s our turn. We’ve reached the computer and Ahmed is just giving his brother’s name. He’s typing it in now. Ahmed: I give the family name Al-Tamimi but he couldn’t find my brother – he found another guy the same name from Baghdad but my brother from Babylon so I couldn’t find the name . I’m so sad and disappointed because this was the only hope for me to find anything about my brother and it seem to me I wait 22 years. Tim: We’d better let the next people in the queue because there’s an awful lot of other people here waiting for any kind of information. And I think maybe I should leave Ahmed for a moment because he almost looks as though he’s going to burst into tears. (pause) Ahmed, let me ask you – if you’re brother’s name had been there what would you have learnt from that ? Ahmed: I want to know when he get executed and how. At least this would give like an end. Tim: What’s it been like for your family? What’s it been like not knowing for certain? Ahmed: Every time when Saddam give a fake amnesty they have hope. And they have feelings again like the same day when they arrest my brother and after that they find out there’s nothing there’s no information. It’s like when someone die you get sad one time but after that you forget, with this process you feel that they torture you every day. In the field Tim: We’ve got out of car in the middle of a vast expanse of sand, and ahead of us we can see what looks like the remains of an old quarry. Woman: We were told there were multiple graves here – so we’ve come here to see if that’s true. If this ends up being a crime scene, we can’t touch it at present, we’re only looking at what’s already been disturbed. WIND W/T Tim Commentary : These two young women are kneeling over a small pile of bones in the scorching desert south of Baghdad. They’re part of a small team of forensic archaeologists from Bournemouth University who spend their working lives at scenes of mass murder. If Ahmed al-Tamimi can find the body of his brother, he’ll depend on specialists like these to help him build a case against the killers: Woman: Three left femora, one of them has a fracture in the mid-shaft. Tim Commentary: They’ve taken all the bones that were already lying on the ground and arranged them into parts of skeletons Woman: We have three left tibia and one also has a fracture in the mid- shaft. Tim: With us today are a few American marines – to guard us against possible guerrilla attack, some senior civilian members of the CPA – that’s the Coalition Provisional Authority that’s governing the country – and the leader of the archaeological team, Ian Hanson: Ian: In forensic terms we like to uncover burials and view them in situ because the position of the body - how bodies lie, how a ligature may be around the wrists or the bones, is very important in working out exactly what happened were they executed here, were the bodies brought and dumped? When communities have removed bodies, they show us a blindfold, but it’s lost its position on the skeleton so it looks like a blindfold it’s a piece of cloth with a knot in it, but if it’s not around the face of a skeleton, we can’t say whether it actually is a blindfold, that wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. Woman: The pelvis and ileum has a gunshot wound and we have gunshot trauma in the cranium. Tim Commentary: It’s almost unbearable to think this is all that remains of somebody’s brother or somebody’s father. A few small bones scattered across sand under the blazing sun, A cheap plastic comb - a single flip-flop but this team cannot allow themselves emotions. Ian: This is just an assessment so we now know there are multiple bones at this site. So this is a confirmed mass grave site. DOORS SLAM CAR MOVES OFF Tim Commentary: And with that, we’re back into our convoy of four-wheel drives. Ian and his team have been travelling the highways of Iraq for a month, moving from grave to grave, examining bones and doing geophysical surveys, and making a first assessment of the scale of the task they face: Ian: We’ve worked in Kosovo, we’ve worked in Bosnia with the Srebrenica massacre so we know our methods can lead to convictions of people who carry out mass murder and genocide . We’ve come to Iraq employed by the CPA and the British Foreign Office to get on the ground as quickly as possible and assess the situation here. We know from seeing sites on the television that communities are starting exhuming graves so we’ve come out to assist them and try and locate as many sites as we can. … All of the sites bar one I think we’ve been to we’ve shown they are mass graves. It’s a whole forensic landscape across Iraq and we’re getting information about new sites literally every day. CEMETERY Tim: We’ve just stopped by the side of the road because we seem to be getting a bit lost. Ian: The guy there said he knows where the site is…. whether it’s the site we’re looking for because there are many sites in this country. Tim: If it’s not, we’ve stumbled by accident on another one. Ian: Very possibly. Tim: Well it’s certainly a cemetery, and one that’s very much in use. Background conversation. Tim: There’s quite a large crowd that’s gathered here and there’s a woman in a black robe. Translator: They took them in 1980 and they executed them in 1982, but we don’t know the exact location where they’re buried. Tim: All people from her family ? Translator: She has seven people from her family dead in this grave site and Saddam’s security took my house and they hanged me from the ceiling in front on my husband. They dug up most of the places that were empty land so by coincidence they found sixteen people buried at this one site, one on top of each other and we can’t tell who’s who. We threw sand back on top of them and we continued to look difference places and we were very tired by the end of the day so we went home. Tim: So this cemetery we’ve just come by completely by chance, this is just one cemetery on one day in the middle of Iraq and already we’ve met several people just wandering round with lists of names lists of their relatives and presumably right this very minute there are similar scenes going on all over Iraq. Translator: (responds) Exactly………..(translates) In 1980 they took my father and my uncles and that’s my mother there (points to lady in black robe). I was just seven years old at the time. Tim: And she was hanging from a hook she told us. Translator: They took my father and they executed him. Tim: And who in this grave site have they already found ? Translator: My father in law and my mother’s son in law, Tim: But they haven’t found their father yet. Tim: I just want to come back to Ian for a second. This is an extraordinarily complicated story here but this isn’t what we expected to find at all is it ? Ian: No they took us to another site, but this is is pretty much an everyday occurrence - you go to one place and get told about several other places. The evil of the state is everywhere I think for these people. Tim Commentary: Sandy Hodgkinson, the Director of Human Rights for the Coalition Provisional Authority, is also travelling with us. Sandy, how do you prevent relatives from rushing in and digging up graves ?. SANDY: We’ve put out a massive campaign of public information to try and discourage them from taking matters into their own hands and digging them up but the reality is - in some towns that’s not the choice they’re going to make and that’s a political decision. Tim: So to some degree you’re racing against time? Sandy: You’re absolutely going to be racing against time It makes it a very delicate balancing test between what some would view justice requires - which is certain sites to have forensic evidence taken from them versus the needs of lots of people to move on and find out what happened to their loved ones.. NEW MUSAIB Ian: We’ve come to say goodbye. My team is leaving now, but other teams are coming. David: We just want to let you know how much we appreciate the brave work that your association has done here this sets a fantastic example for all of Iraq . Tim Commentary. On their last day, Ian and his team have returned to the little town of Musaib south of Baghdad where they’ve persuaded local people to stop uncontrolled exhumations… but amid all the mutual congratulations, there’s one man who’s not quite happy… it’s Ahmed al-Tamimi, the man we first met in Baghdad looking for his brother. Musaib is his home town. Ahmed: We have the programmes we have everything , we just we need the support from you. We need some help for the city, please! Tim Commentary. They say 7,000 people were slaughtered in Musaib when Saddam put down the Shiite rebellion of 1991. This year, immediately after the fall of Baghdad, hundreds of corpses were dug up and laid out in this community centre for relatives to identify. The rest will now stay in the ground till more forensic teams arrive. But Ahmed’s angry that the bereaved families are getting little material help from the Coalition in return for their restraint. He’s spent several years in America, and he’s returned here as part of the Pentagon’s “eyes and ears” programme – paid to report back to the authorities on the attitudes of local people. Like most Iraqi’s Ahmed intensely grateful to the coalition for ending 24 years of nightmare under Saddam Hussein but he’s not impressed with what’s been achieved since then. AHMED IN HALL Ahmed: When I came here the first two days I was just crying. I couldn’t imagine what had happened here. This city used to be one of the beautiful cities on the river. From all my friends I just found three left. All killed or fled the country and the people feel really bad that the criminals that killed their loved ones until now are not yet brought to justice. During uprising in 1991 in about two days we lost 7,000. The one who did that is hiding 20 minutes away. The tribe is protecting him and training to fight back. It seems the Americans know about them, but they don’t act very quickly. Tim: Are you gathering evidence ? Ahmed: Many friends are trying to gather evidence and help us, but whenever we get evidence we go to the chief police chief and we say this man kill my brother and I have witness so we have evidence ready. Tim: How much of that kind of evidence has already been gathered in Musaib? Ahmed: I know of maybe more than a hundred cases about those criminals, but the guy responsible doesn’t have force to arrest those people. I ask him why he can’t arrest one guy of the tribe and he says he can’t because he has just thirty police guys and all of then new. They have just two cars they have few machine guns and he’s asking me to let the Americans to bring some troops because he’s afraid if they arrest just one of them, the tribe they have thousands of men all of them they have heavy weapons. He’s afraid that if he arrest them that during the night they will come destroy the police station and take those guys. Tim Commentary. I expected to find grief in this little Shi’ite town on the banks of the Eurphrates. But months after liberation I didn’t expect to find so much fear. Despite the gradual arrest or elimination of more and more of the men on the Americans’ most wanted list, people here still don’t feel free because many of their former local tormentors are still living among them. They say the new Iraqi local authorities don’t have the capacity to act, and the Americans don’t have the will. That’s also the view of the New York based organisation Human Rights Watch. Its researcher Johanna Bjorken has been in Baghdad collecting testimony on Saddam’s crimes: Joanna: One of the most important things is that there be a process. That it be clear to Iraqis and to the world what is going to happen with justice, where the evidence is going to go. We are very disappointed that CPA hasn’t taken this by the reins. They were very slow to respond to the mass graves issues. They were completely unprepared to secure evidence that was being lost and now we’re seeing it again with organising what the justice processes will be. Tim: What the authority says is that they couldn’t have moved any faster and they had no right to intervene Joanna: Well they didn’t really give people very much of an option. In Salman Pak they discovered a grave right after the area was freed – they discovered them because there were body parts coming out of ground. They contacted American forces who photographed the scene but then nothing happened there for over a month – so relatives then went and dug up the graves themselves because they felt they couldn’t wait any longer. This meant commingled remains and meant that many relatives will never be able to identify their loved ones. The coalition knew this was going to be a huge issue securing evidence and their need to protect it. Their failure to be prepared for this is inexcusable. LUNCH W/T Tim Commentary: Ahmed’s been telling me over lunch that justice here has got stuck in a vicious circle: Americans won’t arrest people without good evidence, but Iraqis won’t give evidence because they’re not confident it will lead to immediate jailings. In two notorious cases, the Coalition arrested suspected mass killers – and then mysteriously released them. Ahmed can’t even discover how an Iraqi would go about getting an arrest warrant enforced. And he needs to know because he thinks he’s got the name of the informer who sent his brother to his death. We’ve decided to consult the Iraqi Bar Association: Tim: It’s a hive of activity in here: all these lawyers meeting, discussing, mopping their brows against the furious heat and reading the latest proclamations pinned up on the wall from the head of the Coalition Paul Bremer. They’re dressed to go to court but they’re milling around so furiously because they haven’t got much work to do. We’ve just bumped into a lawyer and Ahmed has asked for advice about what we should do in this case. Tim: Can I ask, have you managed to secure any arrest warrants in the cases you’re dealing with ? Lawyer: It seemed till now they didn’t issue arrest order till now, and it seems the office of Mr. Campbell didn’t tell them where those cases will go. Tim: Mr Campbell is the senior American judge here in Iraq. Shall we just go outside it’s getting extremely noisy in here ? OUSIDE. Tim: What do you think about all this, is it a problem of time or lack of commitment by the coalition? Lawyer: It’s not time. It’s amazing. It’s the commitment or the willing of the coalition forces is not clear. All the Iraqis are asking, where are our cases? And it seems that Mr Campbell should answer this question not them. Tim Commentary. Mr Campbell is more generally known as General Campbell, as he’s still a reservist in the American military. His normal day job is as a judge in New Jersey, but he’s taking a few months out to be senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Justice – a ministry which currently exists in name only. I’ve come to meet him in the echoing marble halls of Saddam’s grandest palace – now the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority: Tim: Who is in charge of the justice system here at the moment – is it the Coalition or the Iraqis ? CAMPBELL: We like to think it’s a partnership, but if you really asked for a bottom line bottom line the Coalition is in charge , but we can’t shirk our duty. Tim: How will the process of bringing people to trial for crimes of the old regime begin? CAMPBELL: It’s already begun. We are beginning to formulate a central court system in my senses they very much want to handle it themselves and I believe that if we’re confident that they’re capable of doing it and they can do it with the rule of law then it would be the best way of handling it. Tim: There are many, many people out there. People strongly suspected of crimes under the old regime who people say to us there’s testimony against them coalition forces aren’t arresting them. Isn’t this a big problem ? CAMPBELL: You’re the first to mention that to me . I know there’s confusion, there’s bound to be. I think the most important thing the Iraqi people can do is look to see if today is better than yesterday and to exercise patience. Tim: Will arrest warrants be executed ? CAMPBELL: If were to tell you we could react to everyone that we were presented overnight in the way we would like to I would be misleading you and I won’t do that. If we were faced with someone who was currently threatening the coalition forces it would be justifiable to arrest that person first whereas if someone has committed a crime years ago and doesn’t pose an immediate threat it might be logical to wait and arrest that person second. Everyone here is taking the most important task first and moving onto the second most important and very often you don’t get past the first because it consumes an entire day. Tim Commentary. Of course these are early days. Prosecutions for mass killings in Bosnia began only years after graves were first identified. The new governing council has said it will set up a commission to try Saddam and his henchmen in Iraq, but there’s still no decision on exactly how it will work or on how much foreign involvement there will be. And there’s also got to be a decision about the scope of justice… I’ve come back to the Free Prisoners’ Association and looking through these mountains of files you realise how much Saddam’s Iraq resembled Hitler’s Germany in its love of the bureaucracy of murder. It’s not just the number of victims that appals me, but the number of perpetrators…the spies and informers and interrogators… Should they all be punished? Or should they just be asked to confess and repent, like the servants of the apartheid regime in South Africa? Tim: There’s one man who’s just come up to me and I think he wants to tell me some quite happy news he’s just made an important discovery here today. HAPPY MAN: Of course I’m happy. I’ve found now my father name, and the reason why he’s killed. I found he killed because he said that Baath party is very bad. My father said this regime must be changed. This is the history of my father that means my family is a very good family Tim: Because he was a victim of an evil regime? HAPPY MAN: Yes, this is my honour. This is our honour Tim: But the people who took him away… Don’t you want to punish them? HAPPY MAN: No, this is only just the tools for Saddam. They have no mind, no mind. No thinking. Tim: So you do not blame them? HAPPY MAN: No I blame only Saddam and his regime, bad regime. Tim Commentary. But Ahmed does want to pursue his case against a tool of the regime – the student he believes planted an incriminating document on his brother. And he’s angry that the Americans seem interested only in the men who ran the regime – rather as they were in post-Nazi Germany in 1945. He’s conscientiously reporting what people around him say, as he’s paid to do. But he thinks his employers in the Coalition just aren’t listening: Ahmed: I think justice is very important for Iraqi society. People not only lose loved ones they lose their lives, their homes, their future, everything. And when they see that the guy that’s responsible for that is walking on the street in front of them and no-one can speak to him, they feel the regime is still there, Saddam is still there, because Saddam for them is this guy – the guy who come and persecuted them and killed their loved ones is not Saddam it’s this guy. And when they see him still free and he’s walking and laughing and until now they couldn’t find their loved ones – they’re buried where? They feel nothing change. Tim: How long before justice is done in your brother’s case? Ahmed: For me, the time is not important. Today, tomorrow, one month, six month , one year I don’t mind because I wait 22 years. To see there is a process, at least working – I can wait. But if there is no process, I think this is so bad.