HANDS OFF CAIN DOSSIER ON THE DEATH PENALTY AND MASS EXECUTIONS IN IRAQ

“We are launching this dossier in advance because we feel that awareness of the human rights situation – in particular the widespread use of the death penalty - is an important element to consider in the current debate on the Iraq crisis,” said HOC General Secretary Sergio D’Elia, who compiled the dossier.
The launch was attended by Italian Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Margherita Boniver, the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of the Italian Senate Enrico Pianetta, the promoter of the Free Iraq campaign MEP Marco Pannella, Senator Natale D’Amico, Italian MP Antonio Maccanico, and Report Editor Elisabetta Zamparutti.
The use of the death penalty in Iraq has been increasingly extended since the taking of power by the Baath party in 1968 and since 1979, when Saddam Hussein became president.
The latest death penalty decrees - reportedly issued in February by the military bureau of the ruling Baath party and signed by Saddam Hussein’s younger son Qusay - prescribe the death penalty for offences committed by Air Defence Force personnel in wartime.
However it is difficult to distinguish between judicial and extra-judicial executions in Iraq, HOC Report editor Elisabetta Zamparutti said. Hands Off Cain counted 214 executions in 2002 through reports by various Iraqi media and opposition sources. In 2001, the total was 179. These totals do not take into account mass executions reported by dissidents.
According to the dossier “all traces of at least 200, 000 people, arrested by Saddam’s regime have been lost. Many are believed to have been executed and buried in secret places. In cases where the bodies are returned to the families, all funeral rites are forbidden.”
The report, compiled through various sources, says that in Iraq´s northern Kurdish region, 100,000 Kurds were killed or disappeared in 1987-88 alone. In October last year, Iraqi human rights activists denounced the disappearance of thousands of Fayli Kurds, estimated between 7,000 to 10,000 and Kuwait accused Iraq of withholding information concerning over 600 Kuwaitis and citizens of other countries who disappeared during the 1991 Gulf War.
The dossier says that around 4,000 people were executed in the Abu Ghraib prison in the first reported prison ‘cleansing’ campaign in 1984. Between 1993 and 1998 around 3,000 people were eliminated in Mahjar prison, whereas at Abu Ghraib an estimated 2,500 prisoners were executed between 1997 and 1999. At least 128 prisoners were executed in Abu Ghraib prison in 2001 and mass executions were also reported in 2002.
The report also quotes the special rapporteur on Iraq to the UN Human Rights Commission Andreas Mavrommatis who on April 1, 2002, cited testimony of the execution of 4,000 people from 1998 to 2001 and the beheading of 130 women between June 2000 and April 2001. The severed heads of thirty of these women, beheaded in October 2000, were left on their own doorsteps. The regime alleged these women were prostitutes, however human rights groups said that many of the victims had been beheaded for political motives.
The dossier describes sub-human conditions in Iraqi prisons, where torture and mistreatment are very common. Methods of torture used in Iraqi jails include using electric drills to maim hands, pulling out fingernails, sexual attacks and "official rape".
Cruel penalties like the branding of foreheads and amputations of ears, hands and tongues are prescribed by law or arbitrarily carried out by the militia force known as Saddam´s Commandos. This force chopped off the tongue of a man, Faris Ukla, who openly criticised President Saddam Hussein in February last year. Ukla´s tongue was amputated in Diwaniya, the center of al-Qadissiya province in the presence of a crowd of people making him the second Iraqi citizen from the same city and the fifth in Iraq to suffer the horrendous punishment. The dreaded commandos, who report directly to Saddam´s elder son Uday, had cut off the tongue of 17-year-old Zuheir Kadhem in 2001, also for allegedly blasting Saddam. In March 2002, Faris Kadhem and Zuheir Jabbar also had part of their tongue chopped off for publicly criticising Hussein, bringing the number of Iraqis subjected to the horrific punishment to seven. Eyewitnesses said the Saddam Commandos dragged the two to the centre of Diwaniya with their hands tied behind their backs, forced their mouths open, pulled out their tongues and chopped them off. The commandos even demanded the crowd celebrate the amputation by shouting slogans in support of Saddam and when some women among the crowd raised their voices in protest, they fired shots in the air to disperse them.
The full text of the dossier is available at radicalparty.org