Shocking!! Babies found in Iraqi mass grave, EU avoids help

By: Ismail Zabeeh

HATRA, Iraq: Forensic experts digging for evidence against ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam have carried out their first full exhumation of a mass grave filled with the bodies of babies and children still clutching toys. Shocked investigators reported finding “thighbones the size of matchsticks” at what they believe is the site of one of Saddam's atrocities.

US-led investigators hope this discovering will help convict Saddam of crimes against humanity. They say nine trenches in a dry, dusty riverbed at the Hatra site in northern Iraq contain at least 300 bodies, and possibly thousands, including unborn babies, toddlers and their mothers.

It is believed to be the first time investigators working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) have conducted a full scientific exhumation of a mass grave.

“It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field,” Greg Kehoe, a US lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the IST, told reporters in Hatra, south of the city of Mosul.

“Someone used this field on significant occasions over time to take bodies up there, and to take people up there and execute them.”

One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men.

The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face.

“The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks,” said US investigating anthropologist P Willey. “Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick.”

“I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason,” Kehoe said.

Since the ouster of worst oppressor Saddam last year, hundreds of mass graves from different parts of the country containing remains of more than a half million people have reportedly been found.

Besides innocent unborn babies, toddlers and children, grand Marajay (religious authorities), religious scholars, doctors, engineers and lawyers were victim of Saddam as a penalty for they were Shia.

Exhumation has in many cases been a free-for-all, with relatives searching for loved ones in the early days after the fall of Baghdad accidentally destroying or tampering with evidence that could be used against Saddam.

Kehoe and a team of US, British and Iraqi forensic experts are now conducting full scientific exhumations to preserve hard evidence, uncovering the ghastly horrors of the old regime.

“We're trying to meet international standards that have been accepted by courts throughout the world,” he added.

“We're putting a package together on each body removed - pictures of bones, clothes, a forensic report.”

“This is a young boy with a ball, still holding onto the ball when we uncovered him... This is the little ball he was holding onto, you see his little arm right here, this little ball, this little arm, this little boy,” Kehoe said.

He hopes to be able to identify the bodies and return them to families. He said he thinks often about the piles of children's bones he has seen lying in the dirt.

“Sometimes, you go in there, you see soldiers, and it's not to justify it, but my God, little babies, women, with their children shot in the back of the head.. Why,” he asked in a whisper.

Kehoe said work to uncover mass graves around Iraq was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

The Europeans were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death, Kehoe said. European Union refuses to render help in investigation because it is against death sentence.

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