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[casi] News, 09-16/04/03 (8)



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.

[.....]




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