Prisoner Abuse Scandal

Read about the Association for Free Prisoners, an Iraqi non-governmental organization that has been documenting the execution of political prisoners under the regime of Saddam Hussein. So far, the organization has confirmed the execution of 147,000 prisoners by Saddam. Here is the story of one prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti.

The President of the Association of Free Prisoners, Ibrahim al-Idrissi, recalls a day in 1982, at the General Security prison in Baghdad: "They called all the prisoners out to the courtyard for what they called a 'celebration.' We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted to know, they would show him torture like he had never seen. He merely told them he would show them patience like they had never seen. This is when they brought out his wife, who was five months pregnant. One of the guards said that if he refused to talk he would get 12 guards to rape his wife until she lost the baby. Amer said nothing. So they did. We were forced to watch. Whenever one of us cast down his eyes, they would beat us. Amer's wife didn't lose the baby. So the guard took a knife, cut her belly open and took the baby out with his hands. The woman and child died minutes later. Then the guard used the same knife to cut Amer's throat."

Perhaps no regime has been more reminiscent of the Nazis than Saddam’s. The bacchanalian excesses of cruelty, the totalitarian ideology and party-state, the unfathomable horror of its victims. It all, as Irving Howe said of the Holocaust, ‘escapes the usual capacities of mind’. (AJ) (hat tip Hak Mao)