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News, 09-16/04/03 (8) REPUBLIC OF FEAR * Iraqi prisoners of war tell of murder * Hussein's spiritual retreat * The media environment in Iraq * Russian organization was training Iraqi spies, documents show * A War Waged With a Sword At His Throat * Freed aid workers tell of prison torture * Iraqis pour out tales of Saddam's torture chambers * 18 Kuwaiti POWs Found in Baghdad: Report * Armed, alert, teams check citizen's fears * Marines free 123 from Iraq hellhole REPUBLIC OF FEAR http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c =StoryFT&cid=1048313607057&p=1012571727172 * IRAQI PRISONERS OF WAR TELL OF MURDER by Harvey Morris in Eshkawt, northern Iraq Financial Times, 9th April Saddam Hussein's militia used a combination of murder, indoctrination and bribery to try to force a reluctant Iraqi army to fight the US-led coalition, according to prisoners of war captured in recent days on the northern front. The prisoners described paramilitary death squads - made up of Saddam's Fedayeen, Ba'ath party loyalists and military intelligence - who were charged with carrying out the battlefield executions of anyone who sought to flee or retreat. Two men on Wednesday gave eyewitness accounts of the execution last Saturday of a commander of the Iraqi 29th brigade after he recommended retreating from Sheykhan, a frontline town that fell to US and Kurdish forces at the weekend. "He was made to stand in a ditch for half an hour or so and then he was shot," said Salah Mehdi Taleb. "The man who shot him was Mahmoud Taher, who also gave us political education." The indoctrination, which consisted of lectures on the soldiers' Islamic duty to resist invasion, began only when the war started, said Ayad Mohamed Qassem, the other soldier. "He was playing the role of an Islamic teacher, but he was just trying to make us fight." The accounts of death squads operating behind the Iraqi lines echoed testimony gathered by Human Rights Watch, the international human rights agency, which interviewed 26 prisoners at Eshkawt, a tent encampment under the jurisdiction of the International Committee of the Red Cross north of Arbil. Offering an explanation for the motivation of the death squads, Mr Taleb said: "These people were hired by the regime and were paid well so they didn't care who they shot." Some of the prisoners were thin but otherwise looked in good health. Human Rights Watch reported that those detained earlier in the war had spoken of living on grass and being unable to wash for up to 40 days. There are so far 360 soldiers at the camp, including six officers and 28 non-commissioned officers. Most fled the battlefield as soon as they had the chance and surrendered to Kurdish peshmerga. The camp has no perimeter fence and is only lightly guarded. A 34-year army veteran, who served in the Iraqi 12th mechanical division, said the US air bombardment was worse than in 1991. "We had no motivation for this war. The Ba'athists only know how to threaten and frighten people, otherwise every Iraqi would join in to get rid of Saddam Hussein." One prisoner who had been posted at the same frontline position since 1994 said food was poor and equipment scarce until about a month before the war began. Then conditions improved and pay was doubled to the equivalent of about $5 a month. "They suddenly started treating us better, to bribe us to fight," he said. A Kurdish soldier, conscripted into the Iraqi army in Kirkuk, said the death squads warned Arab soldiers that they would be summarily killed by the Kurds if they tried to cross to their lines. "Half of them believed it and half didn't. Even those who didn't have been surprised at how well they have been received here." Officials in the Kurdish autonomous zone have said the men should not be regarded as captives. Masoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic party, has said they are to be treated as the guests of the Kurdish people. One prisoner said the violence and intimidation against the army did not begin with this war. The former Republican Guard veteran sought refuge in Kurdistan after the 1991 war but returned home to central Iraq under a 1994 amnesty. Like many others he went absent without leave shortly after rejoining his unit. "They offered the Ba'athists a 20,000 dinar ($7) bounty for every absent soldier they captured. They caught me," he said, turning his head to the left, "and they cut off my ear." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2003/04/10/MN119574 .DTL * HUSSEIN'S SPIRITUAL RETREAT by Paul Watson San Francisco Chronicle, from Los Angeles Times, 10th April Maqlub Mountain, Iraq -- God knows what compelled Saddam Hussein to build a presidential suite at a medieval Christian monastery, whether it was the stunning view or the pursuit of some deeper meaning in life. After a brief visit to St. Matthew Monastery in 1980, Hussein ordered a complete renovation of the fourth century Orthodox Christian complex and the addition of luxury accommodations for him. Hussein never returned to his two-story retreat, leaving an open question about whether things in Iraq might have been different if the tyrant had spent some quiet time thinking atop Maqlub Mountain. Iraqi troops who had used the strategic mountaintop as a radar station withdrew Tuesday night, and Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdistan Democratic Party quickly seized it with the help of a unit of U.S. special forces. The Kurds called it their greatest victory in three weeks of war as they looked down through a brown haze on Mosul, the country's third-largest city, which is still controlled by Hussein loyalists. A column of half a dozen Kurdish fighters marched through the monastery's gate Wednesday afternoon and saw Hussein's image staring down at them from two portraits still hanging on the walls. They pulled the framed pictures down, smashed the glass with their Kalashnikov assault rifles and angrily tore Hussein's picture of smug serenity to pieces. The Iraqi forces on Maqlub included elements of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency, one of several forces Hussein used to strike fear in his people and to watch over his many enemies. >From the mountaintop, they used radar dishes, radio antennas and eavesdropping equipment, said guerrilla commander Biebo Abdullah Mahmud. "They were here to spy on people and listen to telephone calls," he said. "That's why we can consider this mountain, and this base, as a very strategic place." The Iraqis took most of their equipment, including artillery, with them but left behind three truckloads of files, which are now being studied for any useful intelligence, Mahmud said. The Iraqi troops pulled back to a village just outside Mosul. Mahmud and his Kurdish fighters are eager to take the city but say they won't move until ordered by U.S. military commanders. Air strikes on Maqlub Mountain did not damage the monastery or disturb the meditation and prayers of three Orthodox monks and Bishop Loqa Shaya who live there, said the Rev. Polus Bahnam. "We were living in the same way before the war, during the war, and we will remain the same after the war," said Polus, 71, a blind cleric who has been a monk at St. Matthew Monastery for 42 years. "We were only hearing planes over us, and bombardment, like other people. We have nothing to do with these things. We are just busy with going to the church and praying for a peaceful life for all people." The monastery was built in 363 A.D., almost three centuries before the Prophet Mohammed received revelations from God, leading to the foundation of Islam in what is now Saudi Arabia. More than 1,600 years later, Hussein took a liking to the spot where the breeze is always cool and the vistas breathtaking. He stayed for about 90 minutes during the 1980 visit and ordered the renovations and construction of his two-story suite to be completed at government expense, Polus said. The work took four years. By then, Iraq was locked in a ruinous war with Iran, and Hussein never came back to enjoy the mountain or its monastery. His suite fell into disrepair after his own army hit it with an artillery shell during an offensive against Kurdish rebels in 1991. Birds took advantage of the shattered windows, their droppings now soiling the coffee table in the president's sitting room. When a Kurdish guerrilla pulled Hussein's portrait from a nearby wall, eight lizards living underneath scattered for new cover. Polus says he chatted with Hussein, but the president never mentioned why he wanted his own place at the monastery. Whether for pleasure, or plots, the monastery's doors were open to Hussein without question. "We consider this place a house of God, so everyone is welcome here," the monk said. NO URL (received through email subscription) * THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT IN IRAQ by Kathleen Ridolfo RFE/RL IRAQ REPORT Vol. 6, No. 17, 10 April 2003 With collapse of the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, issues of postconflict reorganization assume a new immediacy, particularly in the face of widespread calls for a speedy transition to native Iraqi administration. One aspect of the country's infrastructure that will need considerable attention is its media system, which initially must serve to disseminate information about security and policing issues and the distribution of aid, but which will soon be called upon to facilitate the transition to a transparent and democratic political system. Ideally, "free and fair" media will relatively soon be called upon to play a leading role in "free and fair" elections in a country rife with ethnic and religious divisions. Like virtually all other aspects of the Iraqi state and society, the media were completely incorporated into Hussein's totalitarian structure, a reality that was symbolically represented by the fact that Hussein gave his eldest son, Uday Hussein, responsibility for it. Under the Hussein regime, there were two official state television channels, Iraqi Television 1 and 2. These were indubitably the main sources of news and information -- all prepared by the state-controlled Iraqi News Agency -- for the Iraqi population. In addition, Uday Hussein ran a third channel, Youth TV, which offered situation comedies, films, and music. In a controversial move that was criticized by Western media groups, forces of the U.S.-led coalition against Hussein's regime targeted Iraqi television beginning on 24 March in an effort to knock it off the air, an effort that was largely successful despite intermittent Iraqi efforts to broadcast from mobile transmitters. State-run Iraq Satellite Television was produced exclusively for consumption abroad and is generally not available domestically, although there have been some reports that some Iraqis are able to view it. Satellite dishes were illegal in Iraq for many years, but in 1999 the government announced that it will allow some access to satellite broadcasts through a state controlled subscription mechanism. However, it took three years to turn that announcement into reality. Last June, "Alif Ba" reported that 14 Arab and other foreign channels would be offered via satellite to Iraqis for 110,000 dinars ($60) per year. In addition, however, subscribers would have to buy decoders for about $150 each, a considerable sum considering the average Iraqi income is estimated at about $600 a year. Al-Jazeera reported that the government's package of satellite channels is "confined to artistic, sports, cultural, musical, and adventure channels." Undoubtedly, the purpose of such restrictions was to limit and control the perceptions of average Iraqis about the outside world, and the longer-term consequences of these limitations will make themselves felt as post-Hussein Iraq opens up. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq Satellite Television carried a range of broadcasts from government-spun updates on the fighting to summaries of headlines and editorials from the state-controlled domestic press. It focused strongly on official statements, reports of meetings held by Saddam Hussein, and announcements of awards offered by the regime to those willing to fight against coalition forces. It also carried footage of international antiwar protests, played patriotic songs and video clips, and featured poetry exalting Hussein's virtues. As late as 6 April, it continued broadcasting and as of 10 April there were still indications that it could resume in some limited capacity. According to U.S. government estimates, in 1998 there were 19 AM stations in Iraq (of which, five were are inactive), 51 FM stations, and four shortwave stations. However, it is important to note that many Iraqi stations have operated only intermittently or have ceased broadcasting altogether since the 1991 Gulf War. In mid-October, there were reports of Iraqi plans to maintain state-radio broadcasts in the event of war by using mobile transmitters. In fact, Iraq Radio has continued to operate throughout the conflict, but according to reports from inside Iraq, its signal has been weak and sporadic. In terms of content and style, Iraq radio follows the same pattern as Iraqi state television. It has broadcast official pronouncements on the fighting, mixed with Iraqi government statements and pro-Iraqi pronouncements by foreign leaders. It has also doled out generous helpings of patriotic music and other inspirational material. RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq (RFI) was established in 1998 in an effort to bring independent and balanced information to the Iraqi people. With correspondents embedded with coalition forces, and based in northern Iraq, Kuwait, and neighboring Arab states, as well as London and Washington, RFI provides a wide range of coverage that simply cannot be compared with fare of Iraqi state media. Its coverage includes summaries from the Iraqi, Arab, and Western press; international news, interviews with opposition figures and political and military analysts; economic reports, and reports on human rights issues. There are five major Arabic-language dailies in Iraq and nine major weeklies, all of which are under state control and several of which are run directly by Uday Hussein. Economic sanctions have resulted in newsprint shortages, leading to print-run limitations since 1993. However, in February 2002, Uday's daily "Babil" doubled its format from 12 pages to 24. Reports on the status of the Iraqi press since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom have been limited, but there are indications that papers have continued to appear, and Iraq Satellite Television has regularly reported on news and opinion pieces appearing in Iraqi dailies. The state has also maintained a total monopoly on printing facilities and the press distribution mechanism. Internet access in Iraq, which was only launched in 1997, was severely restricted by the Hussein regime. In 2001, the U.S. government estimated that there were just 12,500 Internet users in Iraq, which has a population of more than 26 million. Internet services in Iraq are provided by a telecommunications network in Syria and there are frequent interruptions. In November, for instance, service was cut off for about 10 days due to "a halt in the service of the supplying satellite," according to one report. The country has one, state-controlled Internet service provider and two portals. The Iraqi State Company for Internet Services (http://www.uruklink.net) hosts all Iraqi government sites and those of all the country's dailies except "Babil," which is hosted by the Iraqi National Olympic Committee (http:www.iraq2000.com). That site also hosts the sites of the Iraqi Journalists Union, the National Union of Iraqi Students, and the General Union of Iraqi Youth. Both portals have been inaccessible since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Private Internet access is forbidden, and modems are banned. In 2002, the Iraqi State Company for Internet Services announced a plan to open Internet cafes in Baghdad, but it is not known if it actually did so. As of the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there were an estimated 50-70 Internet centers in Iraq, located in places such as luxury hotels, universities, state ministries, and research and industrial facilities. A 26 January 2002 article in "Al-Ittihad," reported that the State Company for Internet Services was offering Internet browsing for 1,000 dinars per hour ($0.50, according to black market rates), and e-mail for 250 dinars per message sent and received. Again, to the average Iraqi citizen, this is costly, and there is no information about how popular these services are. Internet subscriptions are reportedly only granted to corporations at an annual rate of between 1 million-6 million dinars ($500-$3,000). "Alif Ba" ran a feature article in May 2002 on e-mail availability in Iraq that quoted an annual subscription fee of 100,000 dinars ($50) or a daily rate of 250 dinars. In addition to the fee, applicants were required to "produce a photocopy of [their] personal-status identity card and their residency card, [and] the subscriber must specify his user name and choose a password so that his messages remain confidential," "Alif Ba" reported. The article noted that 5,000 Iraqis had signed up for e-mail access. Contrary to Iraqi reports, other sources estimate that e-mail subscriptions run about $80 per year. Providing information to the Iraqi public that is not filtered through the Hussein regime has been an important aspect of Operation Iraqi Freedom since even before the beginning of military operations. U.S. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), told reporters during a 1 April briefing that the United States has been conducting radio broadcasts into Iraq 24 hours a day since around 17 February via five frequencies. The United States is also operating one television station. In addition, Brooks noted, British forces have recently launched radio broadcasts in southern Iraq. "Recent captures of enemy prisoners of war say that the broadcasts are readily accessible and they are also very popular," Brooks said. In addition to the radio and television broadcasts, CENTCOM is continuing its leaflet campaign, adjusting messages to the Iraqi people as warranted, Brooks said. Asked why the broadcasts have not led to high-ranking military defections, Brooks replied on 1 April, "The regime is still present in many areas, and it is the regime and the brutality of the regime keeps many people from taking the steps that they would like to take. This is a very high risk proposition for military leaders who would decide they're not going to fight for the regime, or civilians that would rise up against the regime." British military spokesman Colonel Chris Vernon explained the British broadcasts to a press briefing in Kuwait City on 3 April. "We are running radio stations, which are transmitting into Al-Basrah," Vernon said, according to an RFE/RL report. "It's a mixture -- its all in Arabic, of course. There's a mixture of Arabic and, indeed, Western music, with the broad message that our argument is not with you, the people of Al-Basrah, it is with the regime and, particularly, the Ba'ath Party officials in Al-Basrah who support that and the militia whom they are controlling, the irregulars." At the Pentagon on 5 April, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke told reporters: "The communications and what people in Iraq can see and not see or hear and not hear is up and down. Sometimes it's on. Sometimes it's off." Clarke added that she was unsure of what Iraqis were actually seeing on Iraqi television. Army Major General Stanley McChrystal -- vice director for operations, J-3, Joint Staff -- told reporters at the same briefing that the Iraqi regime has a "very redundant system" in place, "starting with fixed sites, [and including] mobile vans that it uses to put out its signal." McChrystal added that coalition forces have degraded the regime's ability to communicate, adding, "We believe that it is sporadic, at best." Meanwhile, Major General Victor Renuart told reporters at CENTCOM on 5 April that it appeared that Iraq Television -- by which he presumably meant Iraq Satellite Television -- had purchased broadcast time from a number of satellite companies. Renuart added that coalition forces were broadcasting to the Iraqi people on Iraq's Channel 3 television. He added that the coalition was working to assist liberated Iraqis in broadcasting over satellite television. "We're beginning to see many more leaders in the communities of Al-Basrah and Al-Nasiriyah, Al-Samawa, Al-Najaf, even now toward Karbala, become much more supportive, openly supportive of the coalition forces as they see the threat from these other irregular troops go away," Renuart said. "And some have expressed interest in helping to get that message out…And so we're sensitive to try to create the opportunity for Iraqis [to] broadcast on their network." U.S. Brigadier General Brooks told reporters at CENTCOM on 6 April that CENTCOM is broadcasting "nonstop" over the radio. Messages include instructions for approaching coalition checkpoints and warnings to the Special Republican Guard and special security forces to "surrender, flee, or fight and face certain destruction." The broadcasts also advised Iraqis to avoid dangerous areas such as Baghdad International Airport. "We do know that radio is the most common and popular medium that is used by the Iraqi population," Brooks said. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/04/13/SPIES.TMP * RUSSIAN ORGANIZATION WAS TRAINING IRAQI SPIES, DOCUMENTS SHOW by Robert Collier and Bill Wallace San Francisco Chronicle, 12th April A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September -- at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show. The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the "Special Training Center" in Moscow. The Russian government, which has expressed intense disagreement with the U.S.-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly denied giving any military or security assistance to the Hussein regime. Any such aid would violate U.N. sanctions that have severely limited trade, military and other relations with Iraq since 1991. U.S.-Russian relations have been strained by the split over Iraq. It is unclear whether these revelations, coming on top of U.S. charges that Moscow has been supplying other forms of forbidden assistance to Baghdad, may damage them further. The U.S. State Department reacted cautiously Friday to the information unearthed by The Chronicle, saying it could not comment on matters that are the subject of current intelligence operations. But Lou Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said the U.S. government has repeatedly criticized Russian officials for giving assistance to Iraq, and has had recent contacts with the Russian government in which it complained about the problem. "We consider this a serious matter and have raised it with senior levels of the Russian government," Fintor said. "They have repeatedly denied that they are providing material assistance to Iraq, but we gave them sufficient information (during the last two contacts) to let them know that we expected them to take action." Attempts to contact officials at the consulate for the Russian Federation in Washington, D.C., were unsuccessful, and calls to the home of Sergey Ovsyannikov, the head of the consular division in Washington, went unanswered. However, experts in Iraqi and Russian intelligence operations were not surprised that Mukhabarat officials had received specialized training in Russia. "I can't think of anybody in the Iraqi security service that hasn't been trained in Russia," said Ibrahim Marashi, a research fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Details about the Mukhabarat's Russian spy training emerged from the Iraqi agents' personnel folders, hidden in a back closet a center for electronic surveillance located in a four-story mansion in the Mesbah district, Baghdad's wealthiest neighborhood. Each personnel file was contained in a thick folder with documents that reflected the agent's Mukhabarat career. Three of the five Iraqi agents graduated late last year from a two-week course in "Phototechnical and Optical Means," given by the Special Training Center in Moscow, while two graduated from the center's two-week course in "Acoustic Surveillance Means." One of the graduating officers, identified in his personnel file as Sami Rakhi Muhammad Jasim al-Mansori, 46, is described as being connected to "the general management of counterintelligence" in the south of the country. Born in Basra, he joined the Mukhabarat on May 1, 1981, according to his file. His "party position" -- a possible reference to the ruling Baath Party -- is listed as "lieutenant general." His certificate, which bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, uses a shortened version of al-Mansouri's name. It says that he entered the Moscow-based Special Training Center's "advanced" course in "acoustic surveillance means" on Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated on Sept. 15. "The studying program has been fulfilled completely and successfully," says the certificate, which bears an illegible signature of the center's director. The Chronicle was unable to determine whether the Special Training Center was a Russian government organization or a privately run facility, though U.S. analysts said it is unlikely that any private firm could train foreign intelligence agents in Russia without government permission. The facility is not mentioned on the official Web site of the Russian Federal Security Service. The Web site for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service was not in operation this weekend. The same Mukhabarat office where al-Mansouri's personnel files were found contained many other documents, including orders for wiretaps and for break-ins at places ranging from the Iranian Embassy to the five-star al-Mansour Hotel to doctor's offices. The documents were only part of a store of espionage paraphernalia scattered throughout the building, which served as the headquarters for a telephone and electronic surveillance operation that helped Hussein's regime keep the Iraqi people under tight control. The Mukhabarat -- formally known as the Da'irat al-Mukhabarat al-Amah, or General Department of Information -- was formed through the consolidation of several Iraqi intelligence units in 1973. According to an analysis by the Monterey Institute, the organization is divided into three major bureaus that are responsible for political affairs, regional intelligence and special operations. Last year, experts estimated that the organization had 8,000 personnel. Besides spying on the Iraqi people and other nations, the agency operated clandestine weapons development programs and an arms-smuggling operation. It reputedly relied on torture and assassination, and was allegedly behind an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former President George Bush during a 1993 visit to Kuwait. The Mukhabarat building, located on a street lined with mansions belonging to such high ranking members of Iraq's power structure as Hussein's son Odai, apparently had been hit by two U.S. missiles that penetrated from the fourth to second floors but did not explode. Most of the buildings in the area were broken into and looted by mobs last week, as U.S. troops occupied main avenues in the district. The sprawling, four-story Mukhabarat mansion has no sign indicating its purpose, and is not known to the general public. The spy agency's main headquarters building is about two miles away in the Mansour district on the other side of the Tigris River. After the doors of the mansion were battered open Wednesday, nearly everything that could be removed -- high-tech surveillance gear, bathroom sinks and even staircase bannisters -- was ripped out and hauled away by crowds of Baghdadis who swarmed through Mesbah and other districts, looting and pillaging. The impressive yet bewildering variety of functions of the Mukhabarat was on view throughout the four-story mansion. In the basement was a metal workshop with several large lathes and milling machines, apparently for making precision tools. Adjacent to the workshop was a room with a long bank of electronic equipment, apparently for taping and listening to wiretaps. On the ground floor was a workshop for making master keys to pick locks. Upstairs was a workshop for manufacturing and adapting surveillance transmitters placed in offices and homes. On tables and in file cabinets were catalogs from companies around the world -- mainly Germany, Italy and Japan -- that sell such spy equipment as transmitters hidden in flowerpots, table lamps and clock radios. In one room was a bank of machines for listening to telephone calls. Another held a media monitoring center that taped and catalogued transmissions by Arab television channels. For years, the relations between Iraqi and Russian intelligence services have been the subject of speculation but little hard information. In late March, the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that Russian intelligence agents were holding daily meetings with Iraqis, possibly with the intent of gaining control of the Mukhabarat archives if Saddam Hussein's regime falls. The newspaper said the archives could be highly valuable to Russia in three major areas: in protecting Russian interests in a postwar Iraq; in determining the extent to which Hussein's regime may have financed Russian political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries. The close relationship between the two countries is largely economic. Iraq and Russia are major trading partners and Russia has billions of dollars tied up in deals with Iraqi businesses -- including debts Iraq has owed to the Russians since the Soviet era. In addition, the two countries were parties to an agreement that gave Russia a stake in developing new Iraqi oil fields as well as electricity generation facilities and other types of crucial infrastructure. Finally, the Iraqis were a major consumer of Russian military equipment and material before 1991. Most of Iraq's weapons systems are Russian, from its tanks and missiles to the assault rifles issued to its infantry troops. Marashi, who has written a detailed study of the Iraqi security apparatus for the Monterey Institute, said Russia's training of Iraqi intelligence agents started in 1973. "That was when the first exchanges were made. The level of cooperation increased in 1981 after the Israelis bombed the Iraqi nuclear facility," Marashi said, referring to Osirak, a French-built atomic power plant outside Baghdad. Peter Brookes, who worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before becoming a national security specialist with the Heritage Foundation think tank, said he had no specific knowledge of the training program revealed in the Mukhabarat's personnel files, but said he was not surprised given Iraq's importance to Russia. "Russia," he said, "has a lot of interests in that part of the world." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14834-2003Apr12.html * A WAR WAGED WITH A SWORD AT HIS THROAT by Anthony Shadid Washington Post, 13th April BAGHDAD, April 12 -- Tahsin glanced uneasily over his shoulder, a well-practiced habit in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A fugitive, he hurried along an alley near the barbershop where he worked, less than a mile from U.S. troops patrolling his neighborhood. With hardly a look, he passed slogans from a bygone era scrawled on the wall -- "Yes to the leader Saddam." Settling nervously into a car, he recounted his story as a soldier in Saddam's Fedayeen. "I was sure I was going to die," he said. In the American-led invasion of Iraq, Saddam's Fedayeen, a militia whose name translates in Arabic as those who sacrifice themselves for Saddam, was the wild card. With a mix of ambushes, hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings, the militia harried U.S. forces driving relentlessly north. To Iraqi officials who predicted victory until the day before Baghdad's fall, the Fedayeen was the prototype of a guerrilla force that would, they said, drive out U.S. forces. The odyssey of Tahsin, a 22-year-old with a look of adolescence, followed the contours of the government's struggle to survive, and of its dizzying collapse. In a week of fighting, he went from Baghdad to Tikrit to Kirkuk and then back to the capital, barreling through the north with dozens of others aboard blue buses of the Iraqi soccer team. Struggling against hopelessness and fear, he prepared for battle under the scrutiny of the militia's swordsmen, appointed to decapitate any deserters. Clad in black fatigues, he weathered bombing and boredom. Then he plotted his escape to the safety of relatives on the Iranian border. "For what was I going to fight?" he asked. In a country where a cult of personality was transformed into national ideology, the Fedayeen was one of the odder creations. Founded in 1995, its membership numbered perhaps 25,000, with headquarters in Baghdad. In words at least, Fedayeen fighters pledged absolute fealty to Hussein. He entrusted their leadership in his son Uday, who was infamous for his streak of indulgence and cruelty. For years, the Fedayeen was the long arm of a ruling clique that traditionally viewed the loyalty of its military with suspicion. In both Baghdad and southern Iraq, with a restive Shiite Muslim majority, its members were sent to quash dissent. The Fedayeen brutally repressed protests that raced through the Baghdad slum of Saddam City in 1999 after the assassination of a leading Shiite cleric and two of his sons in the southern city of Najaf. Like the Baath Party, Fedayeen militiamen were held together by the vast network of patronage that made Hussein's regime so durable. They received salaries twice as large as government employees -- and those willing to carry out suicide attacks received far bigger rewards. Even more important were the under-the-table connections that brought perks of power and reinforced government loyalty. The militia recruited many young men like Tahsin, destitute and desperate. Five years ago, his family left the poor neighborhood of Sayidiya in southern Baghdad for the poorer suburb of Abu Chir, even farther out in the capital's sprawl. Twenty-three people lived in four rooms, among them Tahsin's 11 brothers and sisters. He was the youngest or, as he put it, "I'm the last grave." Tahsin said he joined the Fedayeen after he flunked out of high school in 2001. Facing the prospect of military service, he chose the militia instead. In return, they allowed him to continue his education in a party-run high school. With 1,000 others, Tahsin was based in the Baghdad neighborhood of Mahdiyya. >From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., he reported for training at a camp in the district. One month of the year, he had to perform guard duties at night. For two more months, he had to undergo what the militia called special forces training. Much of it, he said, was rudimentary: hand-to-hand combat, crawling under barbed wire and training with Kalashnikov rifles. Some was intimidating: a jump from a 100-foot-high bridge into the Tigris River that left some recruits with broken bones or dead. With war approaching, Fedayeen fighters were told that their call to arms was a song that would be broadcast three times, every half hour. Its refrain said, "The spearhead appeared glimmering between the hills." For Tahsin, the call came at midnight on March 17. He missed the first broadcast, sleeping through it, but finally made it to the camp on March 20, the day the war started. Their ranks filled up. Foot soldiers wore black; those willing to undertake suicide attacks dressed in white. "Most of them had no work, some of them were students, some of them just got out of the army," he said. Today, Tahsin was nervous. In the days since Hussein's fall, the once vast apparatus of his government has virtually disappeared. Gone are the Baath Party militia, senior officials, informers and even traffic policemen. All that is left are the slogans -- "Iraq, victorious, victorious, victorious, it is victorious with the permission of God." Many Baath Party officers in the neighborhood have not left their homes in days and, if they do, blankly deny involvement in the party. Many feel vulnerable, fearful of vendettas that many predict may be carried out soon. Others worry about drawing the suspicion of U.S. forces, who occupied the nearby Leader of the People Elementary School and sent out foot patrols throughout the day. "I'm scared of the Americans," Tahsin said. He paused, then smiled, giving voice to the widespread sense in Baghdad that Hussein's government may be only hiding. "I don't want to anger Uday, either," he said, only half-jokingly. That fear led him to answer the call to fight the Americans. "I was forced to go. If I refused, I would be considered a traitor and they would execute me," he said. After gathering with other Fedayeen militiamen, Tahsin and his group moved across Iraq, changing locations nearly every day. First they were in Taji, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, then back to the capital after the bombing began. On the third day, they were in Tikrit, the home town of Hussein. From there, riding in the soccer team buses, they barreled north toward Kirkuk. Tahsin sensed they were looking for a fight. But they were lightly armed, he said, with little more than rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The favored tactic by his commander was a suicide attack, strapping a belt of remotely controlled explosives on Fedayeen volunteers. But in the week of roaming through northern Iraq, they faced only bombing, and not all that accurate. They never encountered U.S. ground forces. "We didn't see a tank, thank God," Tahsin said. "I think God loves me." In Kirkuk and Tikrit, they left behind groups of 25 from the 100 that set out. Each group, he said, was joined by men he called "swordsmen." They were dressed in red shoes with a red belt, carrying three-foot-long swords, each with a gray wood handle. Their orders were to decapitate anyone who fled, and swordsman was specially assigned to the group's commander. "If they fled, they would cut off their heads," Tahsin said. It was in Kirkuk, a strategic and oil-rich city that fell to Kurdish forces this week, that Tahsin made his decision to desert. His superiors had nominated him to become a suicide bomber, to throw his body on a tank. That was more than he had bargained for, he said. Tahsin's group left the city before any U.S. forces or Kurdish militias arrived, but he said he knew it was time to leave. "I was willing to fight with a gun, but not to commit suicide," he said. He returned to Baghdad with his group, reporting to the People's Stadium. With a guard, he was sent to fetch water for the militiamen. Outside the gate, he told the guard he was going to buy cigarettes, went around the corner and then ran, past the stadium and past the Baath Party militiamen in the streets. He changed in a house in the neighborhood of Zayuna, leaving behind his black uniform and rifle. He made a quick call to his parents, then caught a taxi. He left with nothing more than his student identification in his pocket. Tahsin said he went as far as he could -- three hours to Mandali, a city northeast of Baghdad on the Iranian border, where his maternal aunt lived. He stayed there until the war in Baghdad ended, returning Friday when he thought it was safe. "I heard the government fell and I knew everything was fine," he said. "I knew I could come home." It appears Tahsin's flight was repeated across Iraq as U.S. forces closed on the capital. His brothers, 26-year-old Salman and 23-year-old Moussa, deserted their army units defending Baghdad one week ago, the first day American troops entered the city. As Shiite Muslims, long oppressed by the Sunni Muslim-dominated Baath Party, it was not a government they wanted to defend. As fathers, they were more interested in taking their families from the front line near Abu Chir and moving them to the relative safety of Saddam City. "They have families and they fled," Tahsin said. Like other Iraqis, he said he was now bracing for what's next -- a moment unlike any in the past 35 years, when Iraq is without a government, without authority and with little sense of the future. For Tahsin, his priorities are simple. School is his priority and then "a good life." "I wish for a car. When I get a car, I want an apartment. When I get an apartment, I hope I can get a wife," he said. Nothing more? "That's it," he said. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396741 * FREED AID WORKERS TELL OF PRISON TORTURE by Kim Sengupta The Independent, 13th April Two members of Médecins Sans Frontières have returned to Baghdad after being arrested and held for eight days by Iraqi secret police, accused of being spies. François Callas and Ibrahim Younous were kept in some of the regime's most notorious prisons before being dumped on the streets in the city of Ramadi, in western Iraq, on Friday evening. The two men were among dozens of foreigners who were picked up by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, in the dying days of Saddam Hussein's regime and then disappeared into the netherworld of the security apparatus while Baghdad fell to US forces. Mr Callas, 43, from Paris, and Mr Younous, 30, who is originally from Sudan but now lives near Leicester, revealed details of the arbitrary way foreigners were detained in Baghdad as the Iraqi regime hunted for American and British agents. A Japanese journalist on a taxi ride was taken by the driver to the Mukhabarat headquarters because it was claimed he shot unauthorised film on his video camera. Others were picked up merely on suspicion. The experience of the two medical aid agency officials also shows that cities such as Ramadi, an important administrative centre for western Iraq which is behind American lines, remain in the hands of the regime's officials. The aid workers were arrested in their rooms at Baghdad's Albraj Hotel after the secret police were informed that they had been using a type of hand-held satellite telephone banned by the regime. They were first taken to Abu Gharb, a vast jail in the suburbs of the capital, and from there to prisons in Falluja and Ramadi. Around 100 detainees, including local prisoners, were put in a cell meant to hold around 20 in Ramadi. At Falluja there was just one toilet and one water point for 200 people. Although the agency men were not physically mistreated, they did hear other prisoners being beaten. Their belongings, including passports and $25,000 in cash, have disappeared. While the foreign prisoners were held at Abu Gharb, the area came under attack from the Americans. "It was very worrying," said Mr Callas. "There was an anti-aircraft battery that kept firing away from the top of the building, and there was the obvious possibility that we were going to be bombed. All the guards hid in the bunker, so there was no one to do anything even if we had been hit." Mr Younous said: "The conditions were appalling. The food, when we had it, was terrible. One of the main problems was that with the war, telephone links had broken down between Baghdad and other areas. The intelligence people did not know what to do with us, and because of the nature of the system here, no one wanted to take responsibility. "We were evacuated from Abu Gharb and Falluja because it simply got too dangerous for the Iraqis who were holding us. When we got to Ramadi, the police chief there did not want the responsibility of having us in his custody. But, at the end, they had nowhere else to put us." Mr Callas and Mr Younous said the scale of abuse depended on the type of alleged crimes of those arrested and their nationality. Political prisoners Iraqis and Arabs among the foreigners suffered the most. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-04-13-saddam-secrets-usat_x.htm * IRAQIS POUR OUT TALES OF SADDAM'S TORTURE CHAMBERS by Jack Kelley USA TODAY, 13th April [.....] "I was beaten, refrigerated naked and put underground for one year because I was a Shiite and Saddam is a Sunni," said Ali Kaddam Kardom, 37. He said he was arrested in the central city of Karbala on March 10, 2000. He returned to the facility in Baghdad this weekend, he said, to help rescue any Iraqis who still might be imprisoned there. [.....] As U.S. forces entered the Iraqi capital here, hundreds of military intelligence officers fled the Directorate's headquarters. Apparently, they feared being captured or killed by the U.S. forces or beaten by Iraqis for decades of tortures and killings committed here. Over the weekend, relatives of those arrested began arriving at the now-abandoned intelligence headquarters to inquire about loved ones. They brought pictures, birth certificates and dental records. It was the first time most had even approached the main gate, much less entered the site. Signs outside the headquarters read "Forbidden to enter under penalty of death." Kardom, one of the former prisoners who came back, was kept in the facility's underground prison until March 10, records here show. He was charged with "religious incitement" against the government. He denied any wrongdoing. "Under Saddam, there were no rights of appeal," Kardom said. "I begged them to stop as they beat me. It only inspired them to beat me harder." An Iraqi soldier, who according to the facility's records witnessed the beatings, said interrogators regularly used pliers to remove men's teeth, electric prods to shock men's genitals and drills to cut holes in their ankles. In one instance, the soldier recalled, he witnessed a Kuwaiti soldier, who had been captured during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, being forced to sit on a broken Pepsi bottle. The man was removed from the bottle only after it filled up with his blood, the soldier said. He said the man later died. "I have seen interrogators break the heads of men with baseball bats, pour salt into wounds and rape wives in front of their husbands," said former Iraqi soldier Ali Iyad Kareen, 41. He then revealed dozens of Polaroid pictures of beaten and dead Iraqis from the directorate's files. The beatings continued until the last days of the old government. Iraqi Maj. Shakir Hamid, 33, and his two brothers said they were arrested March 5 by military intelligence police and charged with being informants for the CIA. They were released by sympathetic Iraqi soldiers last week, Hamid said. He and his two brothers, Majeed and Shakeer, have cigarette burns on their wrists, the bottoms of their feet and their inner thighs. He pointed out dried blood stains on the cement floor of several jail cells. "The interrogators kept telling me, 'Admit it, you work for the Americans, don't you?' " Hamid said. "Under Saddam, you were found guilty whether or not there was any evidence against you." Most of the five-story building has been demolished by U.S.-led airstrikes. Steel beams and parts of concrete walls cover the floors. Furniture, files and pictures have been burned beyond recognition. Several other buildings on the grounds were left relatively intact. Inside one building, there were files with the names and pictures of Iraq's military intelligence officers. There also were pictures of prisoners, many of whom had been tortured and killed. Former prisoners at the facility here said they were kept in an underground prison adjacent to a pumphouse and near the jail. It was built by the Yugoslav government. The men said the prison contained nearly 400 jail cells. Iraqi soldiers who worked at the site confirm their description. U.S. Special Forces, however, investigated the site last week and said they found no evidence of a hidden prison there. Relatives of several missing Iraqis said the forces searched the basement of the main headquarters, not the site they had recommended. Saturday, former prisoners and Iraqi soldiers said they heard screams of "help" from men who were still there. Several soldiers who tried to enter the underground prison through a manhole said they found the area flooded and doors locked. Kanan Alwan, 41, who worked in the facility's administrative office, said the intelligence officers of the facility programmed the prison's computers, which control the water flow, so that the water level would exceed the height of the prison doors. "They are drowning in there, and there's nothing we can do for them," Alwan said. "The real criminals fled. But the innocents who probably did nothing wrong have been condemned to death." It was impossible to confirm whether prisoners had been left to die underground. But family members of the suspected prisoners, Iraqi soldiers and local residents worked furiously Saturday in an effort to free the men. They tried to shut off the water, break down the doors with hammers and dig holes with shovels and sticks. By 10 a.m. Sunday, the screams had stopped. Many of the family members broke down and cried. Others fainted in despair. Some just walked away in anger. "Saddam may be gone, but his final act was to murder more of his own people," Alwan said. "Now I pray the murders will stop." Contributing: John Diamond in Washington, wire reports http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25211 * 18 KUWAITI POWS FOUND IN BAGHDAD: REPORT Arab News (Saudi Arabia), 15th April ABU DHABI, 15 April 2003, AFP: Eighteen Kuwaitis held since the 1991 Gulf War were among prisoners kept in an underground shelter in Baghdad, Abu Dhabi satellite television reported yesterday, quoting a former Iraqi colonel. The men "are alive ... and in an underground shelter near the military tribunal in the Al-Khadra district," the channel said without naming its source. The colonel, now running the civilian administration in the central city of Najaf, was quoted as saying he knew the soldiers in charge of guarding the prisoners "and told American and British forces about them yesterday". "The prisoners were held by the Republican Guard and moved from one governorate to another. Before the ground war began they were put in the underground shelter in Baghdad" and remained there. [.....] http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/04/15/009.html * VIRTUAL SADDAM TAKES AIM by Boris Kagarlitsky Moscow Times, 15th April When the war in Iraq first began, many expected it to last no more than two or three days. The cheerleaders of U.S. military might immediately declared that Saddam Hussein's regime had crumbled. The only question left was how many hours it would take coalition forces to reach Baghdad. When the allied advance stalled a few days later, Russian patriotic publications joyously predicted that the Iraqi brass -- trained in Soviet military academies -- would crush the hated "Yankees." Then the situation changed again, and the attacking armies began occupying Iraq's cities with unexpected ease. When they entered Baghdad, U.S. forces found no serious defensive installations in place, and no evidence of preparations for an extended conflict. The bridges and buildings were not mined. No permanent weapon emplacements were discovered. Television reports showed a couple of hundred people pulling down a statue of Hussein on a half-empty square in the city center. To call them "exultant crowds" would have required a very active imagination. While the victors patrolled the city in disbelief, Baghdad's residents stayed put in their homes. The streets belonged to looters -- the third force in this conflict, and its only real winner. At the same time, tens of thousands of Republican Guards simply disappeared along with the regular army, the security services and civil servants. Thousands of foreign volunteers also vanished somehow, though you'd have thought they might find it hard to hide in a strange city. Hundreds of tanks and other vehicles seemed to sink into the sand. Had they really been destroyed or abandoned, the Baghdad suburbs would have been littered with mangled machinery and reporters would have documented the fact. Iraqi troops also disappeared from Basra, though it was surrounded by British forces. Worst of all, the Iraqi leadership seemed to evaporate. The allies couldn't catch any of them, even "Chemical Ali," who was reported to be in the south of Iraq, and then suddenly turned up in the north. Military analysts have had trouble making sense of the conflict because it is proceeding by a different set of rules --those of politics and the information war. Had Hussein's regime collapsed on its own, we would have seen the process of disintegration unfold over a number of days or even weeks. The disappearance of Iraq's entire military and political establishment is evidence of the opposite. The ruling elite is in full control of the situation, and is acting according to plan. What does it hope to achieve? Optimists in the Russian military assumed that Hussein was luring the enemy into the capital, as Prince Mikhail Kutuzov did before driving Napoleon's army from Russia in 1812. More cynical commentators suggested that the coalition had simply struck a deal with the Iraqis. When they entered Basra, British troops found total chaos, possibly instigated in part by Hussein's secret police. Following several weeks of anarchy, it will become clear that Iraq cannot be governed without the "proven personnel" of the old regime. At that point, the Republican Guard and its generals will emerge once more from their homes, now in league with the Americans. Hussein and his sons, if they are still alive, will continue to call the shots from behind the scenes. We will soon know how closely this prediction corresponds to reality. One thing is already clear, however: The events in Iraq are not over; they're just getting started. In forcing Hussein's regime out of Baghdad, the allies have rendered Iraq ungovernable. The democratic alternative for Iraq that they talk about at press conferences was never more than propaganda. As a result, Washington and London don't have much of a choice about how to proceed. They can run the country as an occupying regime, risking increasing guerrilla activity in the cities, civil war and resistance from Hussein's clan, which has far from lost its political and military capabilities. Or they can make a deal with Hussein's people. In any case, Hussein has acted sensibly. By surrendering Iraq's cities more or less without a fight, he avoided untold casualties. And now Hussein has been transformed from a real dictator into a virtual leader. In this capacity he will prove all the more useful to his people - or rather, less harmful. He will no longer issue idiotic decrees, execute his own generals, or put people in prison. Instead, he could become the symbol of an invincible and invulnerable resistance. Hiding out in safe apartments, Hussein is fully capable of inflicting disgrace upon the mighty United States. Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/106/nation/Armed_alert_teams_check_citizen _s_fears+.shtml * ARMED, ALERT, TEAMS CHECK CITIZEN'S FEARS by Brian MacQuarrie Boston Globe, 16th April BAGHDAD -- Moayyad Hassan had a story to tell, a story about a horrific Baghdad prison with four subterranean floors filled with hundreds of Saddam Hussein's political enemies. The inmates had been abandoned in their dank chamber of horrors, Hassan said, when American troops reached the gates of Baghdad. Hassan, 44, is a well-dressed, well-spoken engineer who said he also had been imprisoned, and he wanted to lead American soldiers to the site and liberate his persecuted countrymen. Welcome to the world of the ''ghost chasers,'' the name that the American military has given to their soldiers who pursue and verify the hundreds of tips, leads, and potentially crucial up-from-the-streets intelligence that are bubbling forth from Iraqi citizens suddenly able to speak freely. The tips have led to the discoveries of strongholds of the Fedayeen Saddam militia, vast arms caches, and hidden vaults filled with secret documents. But for every lead that proves to be true, about nine are shown to have been concocted by a populace that lived in fear of the regime. ''This has a lot to do with repression,'' said Captain Andrew MacLean, a ''ghost chaser'' with the Third Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, who spends much of his days talking with strangers, trying to assess their credibility, and driving down streets that until recently had been war zones. ''The people did not know what was going on, so tales circulated'' about prisons, torture chambers, and mysterious spy havens, MacLean said. For MacLean, who coordinated artillery support for a tank battalion during combat, ''this is my favorite phase of the war.'' Although investigating such tips is time-consuming, Lieutenant Colonel John Charlton, commander of a Third Brigade tank unit, insisted that the effort pays enormous dividends. In his sector of Baghdad, Charlton said, ''all of our off-street tips have been right on.'' Charlton's luck has not been shared by all ''ghost chasers,'' but commanders say the overall result has been greater protection for US soldiers, the Army's immediate top priority in postwar Baghdad, and the gradual reduction of the Fedayeen and terrorist threat. This day, the ''ghost chaser'' is Captain Vern Tubbs, a Third Brigade staff officer who listens quietly to Hassan's chilling story of the prison, confers with Kurdish translator Bashar Dosky, and decides on instinct and experience to follow Hassan to the site. Tubbs insists on one condition: Hassan must accompany a convoy of tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and canvas-door Humvees to help ensure that the tip is not really an invitation to an ambush. Only a few nights before, a trusting cadre of US soldiers found themselves in a ferocious firefight when they investigated a tip about a Fedayeen compound. Those soldiers had made the mistake of telling their informant when they would return. When they did, the Fedayeen were waiting. Tubbs asked Hassan to wait on the street without specifying a time for his return or the inspection. Hassan, with several friends behind him, tried to stress his trustworthiness. ''I am here to search for peace for my people,'' said Hassan, a chain-smoking, impeccably groomed man with salt-and-pepper hair. ''My only concern, and please don't be offended, is that we've been led into ambushes,'' Tubbs answered. Hassan agreed to accompany the convoy. Two hours later, when Tubbs returned, Hassan filled a red Mercedes with friends and neighbors for the trip. En route, driving behind his informant, Tubbs confided, ''I don't trust anybody.'' Once at the location, a massive bunker-style compound with air vents protruding from a low-lying, sand-covered mound, Hassan led Tubbs, other officers, and a half-dozen soldiers down a pitch-black alley to the site. Three Iraqi missiles lay in racks nearby. Neighbors insisted they had heard underground noises of men trying desperately to escape. Moving cautiously, the soldiers used low-illumination lights to find their way down a warren of concrete passageways, past heavy steel doors to small bare rooms and finally to rubble strewn stairways to the lower levels. Tubbs pulled up tiles from the floor, pounded his fist against walls, and peered into the darkness in a search for abandoned prisoners. His conclusion: The facility had been used by an Iraqi intelligence agency, and its cells had been holding areas and interrogation rooms. It was one more lead pursued by the ''ghost chasers,'' one more urban legend. http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg * MARINES FREE 123 FROM IRAQ HELLHOLE by Derwin Pereira Straits Times (Singapore), 16th April BAGHDAD -- For three days, American tanks have been shelling a military intelligence building in the posh Al-Khathamia area in west Baghdad. The dozen or so tanks are not here to pound intransigent fighters but to break down concrete beams and steel, to reach bunkers deep underground at the Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya facility. The Marines found 123 prisoners, including five women, barely alive in an underground warren of cells and torture chambers. Being trapped underground probably kept them safe from the bombing of Baghdad by the coalition. Severely emaciated, some had survived by eating the scabs off their sores. All the men had beards down to their waists, said onlookers. Most looked absolutely dazed when they emerged, said Mr Sadoun Mohamed, 37, who lives in the area. 'They had not seen sunlight for a long time,' he said. 'They kept blinking and covering their faces.' He said they were taken to the Saddam Hospital for treatment. Their names were posted on the walls of the Al-Hajabehia Mosque in west Baghdad, as were names of some 40 others known to have been executed or murdered in prison. Hundreds of anxious locals wait for word of their family, relatives and friends, some of whom were taken away more than 10 years ago. Outside Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya, Mr Sadeq Al Saeed, 24, a construction worker, has been waiting sleepless for the last 36 hours. He said he had heard the facility had five levels below ground. He said his father, an Iraqi army captain, was killed in 1991 during the first Gulf War, and his cousins Amer and Jasem and some 50 others were picked out by the secret police for chanting anti-Saddam slogans during the funeral procession. 'That was the last I saw of them,' he said. 'In the night, people raided their houses, blindfolded them and took them away.' He hopes against hope that the Marines will be able to find his cousins, who were brought here to be interrogated. This hellhole is believed to be one of many for Iraq's political prisoners. Thousands may still be behind bars though the regime released many criminals from prisons before the war. The United States soldiers at Al-Istikhbarat Al-'Askariya would not say what they were doing there. Their tanks blocked the entrance. This place could be part of the labyrinth of underground facilities which might still shelter regime members. [.....] _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk