Records are being kept; names are being taken. The abuses in Iraq will not be forgotten. A report presented by the MHRI to Kofi Annan and the United Nations.
excerpts from:
First Periodical Report of Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq
MHRI - BRussells Tribunal
November 11, 2005
First Periodical Report of Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq
MHRI - 2005 Baghdad
The Monitoring Network for Human Rights (MHRI), which consists of more than 20 Iraqi organizations for Human Rights, made this report about the crimes and continuous violations of human rights in Iraq.
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1. Crimes of War and Crimes Against Humanity
- First crime:
Some of the ugliest crimes committed by the occupation forces and by Iraqi military units are the ones committed in the city of Fallujah in the battles of November 2004, and which we summarize in the following:
1. The plundering of health care centers and their destruction by bombing as has taken place in the "Taleb Al-Janabi" hospital and in the Central Clinic. Further the Central Hospital was occupied; the staff and everyone in the hospital at that time were arrested. Ambulances in the city have been bombed and the rescue teams were hindered from entering the city, among them the convoy of the Ministry of Health, despite of the fact that more than 50,000 civilians still remained in the city.
2. Internationally prohibited weapons were used in the bombing of the city, such as phosphoric weapons, Napalm, bombs containing unknown gases, causing the blood to explode out of bodies. 24 carbonized bodies have been found in the area of the military neighbourhood. Surviving civilian eyewitnesses stated that the soldiers of the occupation forces entered the area wearing gas masks. Furthermore, cases of deformed newly born increased as a consequence of the use of such weapons. In a press conference, which took place during the battle, Mr. Khaled Al-Sheikhali, official of the Ministry of Health, confirmed the use of such weapons. [...]
5. The existence of a mass grave with approximately 400 bodies in the "Sajar" area, an area protected by the US Forces, shooting anyone approaching it. The US Officials responsible for burying the dead in the city, admitted to one rescue team, that they had buried 380 bodies in this area after the end of the battle, and that these bodies had previously been stored in a refrigerator originally used for the storage of potatoes.
[...]
8. Information on the whereabouts of some of prisoners, who were transferred to the "Buka" prison in Basra, is lost although they had been seen by other prisoners who were released later. One case is that of Sheikh Shaker Hamdan Abdullah Fayyad Al-Kabeesi, who was arrested on the 11th October 2004 in Fallujah, carrying "Buka" prisoner's number 165251, and who was supposed to be released on the 22nd of December 2004 but still remains missing.
[...]
12. Despite the fact that more than 30,000 houses and buildings were destroyed in the battle, the US Forces continued to destroy empty houses before their inhabitants could return. US Forces destroyed in one day 20 houses in the "Shurta" neighborhood. These houses connected 2 schools, which were taken as military bases. The inhabitants of these houses confirm that they had seen their houses in good conditions only a few days before. The reason for the demolition was to secure clear vision on the surrounding areas.
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- Second crime:
On the night from the 4th to the 5th of March 2005, when a group of farmers came to sell their goods in the area of "Oulwa Jameela", a police car and a civilian car (Opel) stopped and arrested these farmers, as eyewitnesses from "Oulwa" affirm. These farmers were:
1) Nayef Majoul Saleh
2) Taha Abbas Salman
3) Lu'ay Mahmoud Majoul
4) Abdallah Manhmoud Saleh
5) Jabbar Matlek Saleh
6) Saleh Mohammad Saleh
7) Sabah Kareem Sa'eed
8) Qasem Mohammad Sa'eed
9) Ziyad Majoul Sa'eed
10) Qasem Ne'mah Saleh
11) Mohammad Saleem Jameel
12) Wahhab Mahmoud Salman
13) Mohammad Wahhab Mahmoud
14) Ammar Kareem Najem
After 2 days of this incident, the above mentioned were found dead, their bodies disfigured, full of bullets, their skulls smashed. They were found in a garbage dump in the areas of "Kisra" and "Atash", in the outskirts of Baghdad. Their relatives state, that 2 of the above mentioned survived and were brought to a hospital, where their pursuers executed them at the hospital's entrance.
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* There are repeated cases, where women are taken hostages by the occupation forces, in order to find and to arrest their male relatives, who are being searched for by the U.S. Forces. In addition, the U.S. Army has lately enacted a Law, permitting the infantry of the naval forces in Al-Mosul to arrest the mothers, sisters and wives of Iraqi fighters, for the duration of the search, so that the suspects will turn themselves in. This information was confirmed by a Colonel of the Iraqi Army, who prefers to stay in anonymous.
These procedures were forbidden by the U.S. Army after complaints by the Ministry of Human Rights in Iraq, but are now in effect again. In one case, 4 girls less than 20 years old were arrested in their house in the "Somer" area.
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It has to be mentioned, that the most dangerous violation of the rights of Iraqi prisoners in U.S. detention camps in Iraq, is their transfer into U.S. prison camps outside of Iraq, such as the camp at Guantanamo, prisons on board of U.S. warships located in the Arabic Gulf and in the Pacific Ocean, and to prisons within Kuwaiti territories. The International Red Cross affirmed the presence of 8500 Iraqi prisoners of war in Kuwait.
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* The U.S. forces have turned some vital public facilities into head quarters and prisons, as they have done at the Al-Maseeb Electricity Station and at Al-Karkh Water Clarification Station at Al-Taremiyah, thereby hindering these facilities to serve the Iraqi citizens.
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On the night of 28th May 2005, a group of the National Guards was patrolling in the city, when one of the soldiers mistakenly shot himself after their car stumbled on something on the road. His colleagues thought that their patrol was under fire, so they started shooting on everyone around. This resulted in injuring 17 civilians, mainly women and children. One of the injured children died 2 days after. On the next day, an officer in the National Guards gathered the citizens of that area and apologizes to them. Nevertheless, the soldiers responsible for this incident were not punished. Official Iraqi and American sources later claimed that a joint patrol came under attack and that the victims of the incident were a consequence of retaliation.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17727&date=12-nov-2005_03:20_ECT