Iraq’s prison secrets now blowing in the wind

By David Fox

BAGHDAD, April 11 (Reuters) - If walls had ears, the only sounds a drab
brown building in Baghdad would have heard for the last 10 years would have
been the anguished cries of Saddam Hussein’s enemies.

“This is a place where people came and were never seen again,” said Yousef
Khamis on Saturday as he picked his way through the debris left behind after looters
descended on the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

“People used to come here to ask about their relatives. But if you asked too much,
you also might be put inside.”

With Saddam Hussein’s regime toppled and the administration vanished, looters
have descended on government buildings across the capital to cart off furniture,
stores and fittings.

But thousands of Iraqis have also flooded into some of the regime’s more notorious
prisons and security agencies to try to find information about relatives and friends
who have been missing -- some for decades.
The tragic irony is that Saddam’s downfall will probably ensure they’ll never
discover their real fate.

LOOTING SPREE

The carefully kept paperwork of years of systematic, state-organised oppression
is now blowing through the streets of Baghdad, the result of the looting spree that
started when coalition forces seized the capital.

“My husband, he was taken. My son, he was taken. My brother, he was taken,”
one woman told Reuters at the headquarters of the Iraqi Military Intelligence agency.

“I am looking for their papers. Have you seen their papers?”
A

t the Intelligence Service headquarters, the ground floor appeared much like any
other government office in any other developing nation -- rickety furniture, but a pot
plant here or there adding an air of humanity.

In the administration section, piles of documents attested to the perverse mundanity
of Saddam’s intelligence gathering. Appraisal forms for his operatives were gathering
dust in a corner.

One listed Nathim Hashim Abbas Zabar as working for Unit 1 of the M7 group,
active in M6. There was space on the form for his Ba’ath Party superior to add his
comments. Under a section headed “What inducements have been offered” was written “none".

At the end of a corridor, a narrow, dank staircase led to three floors of cramped,
bare cells around 2 metres by 2 metres (six foot by six foot) in size.

Each cell had a tap and hole in the floor for ablutions, but contained nothing else --
no bunk, chair or light. They had clearly been recently occupied as many also contained
a few rolls of stale bread.

CELL WALLS ENGRAVED WITH SUFFERING
The walls of most cells had been engraved with the sufferings of the inhabitants.

“It has been three months I think. The days and nights are one,” was scratched
into the door of one cell. “I now say ‘yes’ to Saddam Hussein. Always Saddam Hussein,”
on another.

The saddest of all was a carefully drawn portrait of a family -- a women, two girls,
a boy and a baby wrapped in swaddling.

Scratched low on the wall closest to the door -- where it couldn’t be spotted by a
guard checking on a prisoner through the spy hole -- it was dated 1998 and signed “love".

At the Military Intelligence headquarters across town, there was pandemonium when
two sacks containing passports, ID cards and other documents were discovered in a cupboard.

Most were for foreigners such as the photocopy of a Kuwaiti passport of Zayed Salman
Muttar, listed as born in 1945 with a social security number of 05601/26.

Kuwait has been pressing Iraq for more than a decade to account for over 600 of its citizens
still missing from the Gulf War, but there was no way of telling if those files could settle their fate
as they were swiftly tossed aside and trampled underfoot.

As their search yielded no news of missing relatives, many there turned their wrath on
the coalition forces for allowing the intelligence agencies’ files to be so unsystematically trashed.

“Why are the Americans not preserving these places so that we can check carefully,”
asked Mohammed Afrin, whose tattered business card listed him as being a member of the
Baghdad Chamber of Commerce.

Dozens of people in the crown shouted agreement. All clamouring to be heard.

“There is no administration here now. Why have the Americans not brought an administration to look after these things,” he said

(Written by David Fox, Iraq tel: +882 Editing by XYZ)
REUTERS FOX