| Subject: Remains are old soldiers, not torture victims |
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Date Posted: 07:08:27 04/08/03 Tue
Remains are old soldiers, not torture victims
08.04.2003 [03:30]
Human remains found inside a makeshift morgue in a former artillery complex appeared to be soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq war, not victims of atrocities as first reports suggested.
Investigators from the US 75th Exploitation Task Force arrived at the site north of Zubayr on Sunday morning from their camp in northern Kuwait to investigate initial descriptions which suggested the morgue was a centre for torture and
execution.
But after just a few hours, Chief Warrant Officer Dan Walters, the leader of the task force's Criminal Investigation Division unit, said a preliminary examination of the remains of 408 men in 664 thin wooden coffins and some of the thousands of pages of documents in a building next to the warehouse suggested that atrocities had probably not occurred there.
Rather, he said, Iraqis had apparently been processing the remains and preparing to exchange them with Iran.
"Their wounds were consistent with combat deaths, not executions," said Mr Walters.
"So far," he added, "there are no indications that war crimes were committed here."
Outside the warehouse, a bullet-riddled wall also turned out to be less than the initial reports had suggested. "A search of the area did not reveal any evidence that the wall was used as a firing wall or an execution wall," said Mr Walters.
An estimated one million people were killed in the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, which Saddam initiated against the fledgling Iranian Islamic government, his first war as president. The conflict ended in an uneasy truce. But Iraq claimed victory in the war, which nearly bankrupted the government and paved the way for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
It was in the war with Iran that Saddam ordered the use of poison gas against enemy forces for the first time, as he did against Iraqi Kurds. But members of the forensic team examining the remains said they had found no trace of chemicals or biological agents.
Brigadier General Mirfeisal Baqerzadeh, the head of Iran's search and recovery committee of those missing in action, had said that the bodies were found in recent months in joint recovery operations in Iran and southern Iraq, but that the exchange had not taken place because of the American-led invasion. Some early news reports by correspondents travelling with the British forces who stumbled on the site on Saturday suggested that it had been used for torture.
But Captain Thomas Jagielski, who heads the war crimes team, said the suspected "torture chambers" were apparently makeshift offices separated by hastily erected mud-brick partitions. Here, Iraqis had apparently documented the identities of the dead.
About 85 per cent of the dead were Iraqis, Mr Walters said. The rest are believed to be Iranian. The men are believed to have been killed sometime in the mid-1980s.
Mr Walters said efforts would be made in the coming days and weeks to return the remains to the families of the Iranians and Iraqis.
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