Morbid Games

Monday and Wednesday were execution day for Saddam Hussein8217;s political opponents at his most notorious jail 8212; regular as clockwork...

Monday and Wednesday were execution day for Saddam Hussein8217;s political opponents at his most notorious jail 8212; regular as clockwork, with no let up until just a week before war.

8216;8216;Most weeks they would come with bodies, sometimes one, sometimes 10,8217;8217; said Mohammed Alaa, the old man who dug the graves in which they lie nameless, marked just by a number on a yellow metal plate. In nearly 1,000 graves, a walled enclosure at the back of the Islamic cemetery on the edge of the small town of Abu Ghraib has hidden its victims for years.

Only the dead were allowed in. With Saddam Hussein gone, Iraqis have desperately sought missing relatives, searching tunnels and jails for bodies or loved ones, peering under bridges for hidden compartments, listening for voices. The search is usually fruitless.

Now they are coming here too, to sprawling Abu Ghraib, Iraq8217;s largest jail which has been home over decades of Saddam8217;s rule to thousands arrested for political dissent.

Qassim al-Temimi wandered among the mounds of earth at the cemetery, clutching a piece of paper bearing the name of his nephew Abas and the date of his arrest in September 1982. Rasul Abeid, who read verses from the Koran as the bodies were buried, could offer little help.

8216;8216;They were all political prisoners. The security officials gave us the number and we followed orders. Only they have records of who they are,8217;8217; he said. 8216;8216;It started in the 1980s and the last one that came was 10 days before the war.8217;8217; Some relatives say the Americans now have the lists, but with the looting and chaos that followed Saddam8217;s fall, little is clear 8212; and it could stay that way.

Gravedigger Alaa said the burials were shrouded in secrecy. 8216;8216;The security men would bring them, no one else was allowed to come near. Sometimes they had kept the bodies so long they were decomposed, just in pieces,8217;8217; he said.

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Western human rights groups say thousands of political prisoners were executed by Saddam though no one knows even an approximate figure. In December, Britain, seeking to turn public opinion in favour of war, accused Saddam of gross Human Rights violations, from acid baths and eye-gouging to rape and mass execution.

Abu Ghraib, some 30 km from Baghdad, is now empty of inmates after their jailors fled in the early days of the US-led invasion. Others had been freed months earlier when Saddam pardoned political prisoners for the first time.

The metal doors of tiny, windowless cells lie open, the watchtowers on the top of 30 foot walls deserted.

Along the paved internal roads of the huge complex are portraits of Saddam, smiling, waving, holding a gun and receiving a kiss from a small girl.

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One road leads to the gallows. Inside a dank, dark building, two trap doors were cut into a metal platform with the executioner8217;s lever between them. On the floor lay a discarded rope noose.Reuters