Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 28. August 2002 / Timeline August 28, 2002
Version 3.527. August 2002, 29. August 2002
Besættelsessoldater skjuler sandheden om dræbte civile
Af Coilín ÓhAiseadha
Tre døde civile, flere hårdt sårede,
dødsattester uden dødsårsag, forsvundne vidner,
en undersøgelse - men ingen undersøgelse
alligevel.
Der er meget, der tyder på, at amerikanske soldater forsøger at tilsløre den fejl, de lavede, da de dræbte tre uskyldige civile i Bagdad den 7. august. Bl.a. ved at presse læger til at lade være med at skrive dødsårsag på dødsattesterne.
Læs venligst nedenstående rapport fra Caoimhe Butterly, irsk menneskerettighedsaktivist med Voices in the Wilderness i Bagdad. Bemærk telefonnummer og mail-adresse nedenfor.
The things that keep us here
Caoimhe Butterly, Baghdad
Anwar Adel Khardom points to her heavily pregnant, shrapnel-sprayed
stomach as she fluctuates between composure and frantic,
inconsolable grief-"what sort of life will this child be born
into?" Her thirteen year old daughter Hadil, frail arms bruised and
scarred with shrapnel, head bandaged with white gauze, remains
wide-eyed and observant, fanning her mother with a woven fan as the
heat of an oppressive, airless day reaches its midday climax.
The car that carried Anwar's family into a line of fire that pumped
more than twenty bullets through the windshield and chassis into
the warm living flesh, vital organs and skulls of her husband and
children remains outside. The seats and headrests were ripped apart
by bullets and remain covered in faded, darkened bloodstains.
Hadil's blood-stained handprints on the outside of the car are the
same colour, left there as she groped her way out of the car that
held dead Ola and Haider and dying Adel and Mervat, trying to
follow her mother as Anwar ran towards the house they had just come
from, screaming for help.
No help came.
At 9:30 p.m. on August 7 in Hyatt al Tunis, a residential
neighborhood in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers continued to shoot so
erratically at anyone attempting to help the wounded, that they
proceeded to injure at least five other civilians and two of their
own soldiers, as other troops in a military base stationed at the
end of the street joined in. Ground troops from the First Brigade,
First Armoured Division proceeded to fire round after round into
the darkened street, shattering the quiet of a summer night and
destroying the remnants of tolerance held by that, and many other
communities, towards an occupational presence whose benign veneer
grows thinner by the day.
When the up to twenty minutes of constant shooting stopped, three
civilians were dead and more wounded. Saef A., a 21-year old
university student, who drove in a car with two friends down the
same road into the path of U.S. occupational forces (who were in
the process of raiding and searching a local store, and having been
subjected to the standard continual diet of mis-information and
racism, were suitably terrified enough to view all Iraqis as
potential or actual enemies) was shot repeatedly and then, as his
two friends, both wounded, leapt out of the car, witnesses report
seeing a soldier approaching the car, point a gun with a
grenade-launcher attached at the still-living Saef, and shoot,
causing the car and Saef's body to be engulfed in flames.
Adel Abdul Kareem and his 8-year old daughter, Mervat were taken
from the scene, still living, by a U.S. military ambulance at ten
p.m. They were not delivered to nearby Medical City Hospital until
11 p.m., shortly after which they both died from their injuries and
heavy blood loss. 18 year-old Ali Hussein Ali and 19 year-old Abbas
Shamarwit, the wounded occupants of Saef's car were-according to
witnesses-beaten by U.S. soldiers, hand-cuffed, had hoods put over
their heads, taken into military custody and detained for two days
at a nearby military base. They were then disappeared for over a
week. Abbas is now being held in administrative detention at the
Airport prison, Ali's whereabouts are still unknown.
The August 7 killing of six civilians is not an isolated event -
excessive use of force by Occupation forces, breaches of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, live ammunition being used as a form of crowd
control, and civilians killed at checkpoints has become a
regularity, as those responsible are not brought to justice, and a
growing sense of unaccountability reigns. What distinguishes the
shooting on the 7th is rather the horrific nature of all of the
deaths and the terrible loss that they have left Anwar and Hadil,
in particular, struggling to deal with.
Distinctive, too, is the blatancy in which a high-level cover-up is
being orchestrated. The causes of death on the death certificates
of all of those killed have been left blank. The forensics doctors
of two hospitals are rumoured to have come under pressure from the
U.S.army. The doctors are not available for comment. Neither are
officials from the Occupational Administration. The only people in
the U.S. army who have commented on the incident have lied. We
interviewed Captain John Mostellar, commanding officer of the
military base where the soldiers responsible for perpetrating the
killings are thought to be stationed. Dismissive of the incident,
Mostellar claimed that an internal investigation had taken place
which would not be made public. His seniors are denying knowledge
of the investigation. We were directed by Mostellar to visit
official army spokespeople at the airport prison, and promised that
official co-ordination would take place to ensure the meeting took
place!
- Upon arrival we were not allowed past the front gate. One
eye-witness at the scene claims that Mostellar, whom he had met the
week before at the military base, was present while the raid on the
shop took place and present during the subsequent killings. Iraqi
police officers stationed at the First Brigade's base, who had
contact with Ali and Abbas while they were detained believe that
they were disappeared because they witnessed too much. "They don't
want the true story known-the soldiers are to blame for the
deaths," stated one policeman.
The families of those killed have decided, with support and
endorsement from Voices In the Wilderness, Occupation Watch and
Belfast-based law firm Madden and Finucane, to launch a call and
campaign demanding justice. Tomorrow Anwar and Hadil, Abu Saef and
others along with representatives from the groups participating in
the campaign, will hold a press conference to demand an
independent, international, transparent, public investigation into
the killings, and others like them. The families are apprehensive,
though determined. So are we. As volunteers with Voices, as
solidarity activists on the ground we have become increasingly more
critical of the hostile and violent nature of this occupation,
which can only elicit a response of growing hostility and violence.
Our response to the escalating violence is to support the growing
civil society currents of grassroots organizing and non-violent
resistance, and we too are being subtly targeted and
intimidated.
Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights activist in Baghdad with
Voices In the Wilderness. For more information about the Relatives
and Friends for Justice Campaign,or about the Union of the
Unemployed's continued sit-in protest, please contact her or Ewa
Jaciewicz on: (mobile) 001-914-360-2686 or: masasa73@hotmail.com
and info@vitw.org
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http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/pages/newPages/SBbutterly.html
08/28/2002
Belgiens sundheds- og miljøminister, Magda Aelvoet, er
gået af i protest mod regeringens salg af 5.500
maskingeværer til Nepal, noterer Information.
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