SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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How to Lose a War
The Spokesman, 90
Seeking Missing Persons in Iraq
Eman
Ahmad Khamas, an Iraqi journalist who lives in Baghdad, was interviewed
EMAN
AHMAD KHAMAS: … I work on the missing, a very big issue in Iraq, I work on
the detainees. People disappear in Iraq. People – especially men – are
arrested, and you don’t hear anything about them. For example, during the
first days of the war, between 20 March and 9 April [2003], when the Iraqi
state collapsed, people disappeared. There are eyewitnesses that these people
were taken by the American troops. Some of them may be killed. Some of them
may be in jail. But now, they don’t exist.
AMY
GOODMAN: Well, how do you find out? I mean, if you want to find out if someone
has been jailed, what do you do?
EMAN
AHMAD KHAMAS: There are eyewitnesses in the place that he disappeared, and
they say that ‘We saw him, he was injured and was taken in an American tank
or vehicle,’ or ‘He was taken,’ … There are injured prisoners who are
released and they say that in our room and the place, we had this man, and
they give his description – many things that no one else would know, only
the person who was with him.
AMY
GOODMAN: The American authorities in the US-run prisons will not tell you?
EMAN
AHMAD KHAMAS: We go to the American military bases, to the prisons, and we ask
about these people. They deny them.
AMY
GOODMAN: They deny that they are there?
EMAN
AHMAD KHAMAS: They deny they exist in that prison. For example, we have a
story of a man. He was supposed to be in prison in Umm Qasr, you know, Camp
Bucca in the south, deep in the south.
SEEKING MISSING PERSONS IN IRAQ
AMY
GOODMAN: Camp Bucca is named for a fireman who was killed 9/11 in
EMAN
AHMAD KHAMAS: Yes, but for Iraqis it is a very big prison. It is a camp where
tens of thousands of Iraqis are arrested for three years now. So people come
from there, and they say, ‘We know this man, we know this man,’ etc. And
we go there. Sometimes even the American themselves, they say – the American
authorities, the American officials, they say, yes, they put list of names.
And when we go back, we ask about them, they say, ‘No, we didn’t do
that.’ And we show them, I have a paper, I have a document, of one of these
men. And now he’s denied.
I
don’t know the number of these people. The number is between 5,000 and
15,000. But I had a meeting with a general called General Brandenburg in the
Ministry of Justice. And he said that he has records of that period. And he
asked me to give him the names that I’m looking for. And I did. But when we
had the meeting, and we had a date to go and to talk about these people, to
give him the names, he did not show up, unfortunately. I’m still waiting for
an answer. They said, in the Ministry of Justice, they said that he’s
changed. Now, there is another one, called Garner. But I didn’t meet him
yet. And I’m looking forward to meeting him and giving him the list of names
and the stories of these people who disappeared.
This
is a very big tragedy in Iraq, because there are families, mothers, wives,
children, who are waiting to hear about their loved ones, if they exist, if
they are dead, if they are alive. They simply won’t answer. That’s all ...
