Rumsfeld Visits Mass Grave Site in Iraq
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited a mass grave site and a Saddam Hussein execution chamber Saturday, paying grim homage to atrocities of the deposed Iraqi president’s rule.
Rumsfeld stood atop a mound of powdery dirt overlooking the graves of about 900 people summarily executed during a Shiite Muslim uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. They were the unidentified among more than 3,000 massacre victims unearthed in Al Hillah, a 1,000-year-old city near the site of ancient Babylon, shortly after American forces moved through last spring on the way to Baghdad.
Dr. Rafid al-Hussuni, a physician who lost two uncles and two close friends in the massacre, stood next to a somber Rumsfeld and explained his efforts to safeguard mass graves throughout the country.
Al-Hussuni was involved in the Al Hillah exhumations and started a volunteer group to counsel patience among Iraqis desperate to open the mass graves to find the remains of their loved ones. Hasty and haphazard searches could destroy evidence that could be used in criminal prosecution of those responsible.
“If you can arrest all those people and put them on trial, the hearts of the Iraqi people will be satisfied,” said al-Hussuni, who still has not found the remains of his uncles or his friends.
The visit was part of Rumsfeld’s third day of a tour of Iraq to see results of the invasion he helped direct from the Pentagon. The defense secretary also has met with American military commanders and troops as well as L. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led civilian administration in Iraq.
Later Saturday, Rumsfeld toured the cinderblock death house at the notorious Abu Ghuraib prison outside the capital, Baghdad. He stood in the stifling concrete room where condemned prisoners went to their deaths.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the U.S. Army military police brigade now in charge of the prison, demonstrated how prisoners were hung from ropes tied to metal bars in the ceiling. She pushed a lever and doors in the floor opened with a deafening metallic clang.
“I can tell it was designed to impose fear on all Iraqis,” Rumsfeld said.
Karpinski said Iraqis estimate up to 6,000 prisoners were put to death every year in the chamber. One month, she said, prison officials decided they needed to reduce the number of inmates by 2,000 and so executed that many during that month.
Saddam emptied Abu Ghuraib and most other prisons in Iraq in October as the United States prepared to invade. Guards and looters stripped the prisons of most useable equipment, and officials systematically burned prison records, Karpinski said.
“There is very little left to document the horrific things that went on here and in other prisons,” said Donald Campbell, an official with the American-led civil administration who is advising the Iraqi justice system.
Coalition officials estimate that Saddam’s regime killed more than 300,000 people, said Sandy Hodgkinson, a U.S. State Department official advising the newly created Iraqi human rights ministry.
The coalition has reports of 151 mass grave sites, and Iraqi groups estimate there could be as many as 500 around the country, Hodgkinson said. Local Iraqis estimate 15,000 people could be buried in the area Rumsfeld visited, and hundreds of bodies have been unearthed nearby, Hodgkinson said.
Hodgkinson said Bremer’s administration has set up guidelines for international human rights groups to follow in unearthing mass graves to preserve evidence for future trials. So far, U.S. military investigators have collected preliminary evidence at the sites near Al Hillah and some others for possible use in future trials, she said.
The civil administration will help Iraqis set up their own special court system to hold trials for atrocities such as the massacres near Al Hillah, Hodgkinson said.