Is this what Blair took us to war for

TEARS flowed down the cheeks of Buthaina Ibrahim al-Hayess, 55, last week as she reflected on the suffering inflicted on her family by Iraq’s security forces.

First her two eldest sons were kidnapped and held for two months. Then her husband and her brother were shot. Now her two other sons have been taken away.

A diminutive figure dressed in black, al-Hayess is not a criminal and insists her family has no connections with any insurgent group. Her only “crime”, she says, is to be a Sunni Muslim in a country whose forces are dominated by Shi’ites.

Her story is one of many that have emerged in recent weeks of Sunni men seized by security forces without explanation and then either held for ransom or killed. Taken together they indicate an ugly campaign of sectarian reprisals against the minority Sunnis, who dominated the country under Saddam Hussein.

Al-Hayess’s nightmare began on June 10 when 30 soldiers from the National Guard arrived at her home in the predominantly Shi’ite Oore district of Baghdad. The men dragged her sons Omar, 32, and Ahmad, 34, from the roof where they had been sleeping.

Handcuffed and blindfolded, the pair were taken to a vehicle into which 11 other men from the same block were bundled before being taken to an unknown building. They were held with 100 others for a month. None was charged.

“They were all males of a certain age who attended the same Sunni mosque in our neighbourhood,” said al-Hayess.

For the next three weeks she and her husband, Haq Mohammed, 63, a teacher, heard nothing of their sons. Then came some good news. After lengthy negotiations with someone purporting to represent the “Scorpion” battalion of the Iraqi army, Mohammed struck a deal to buy their freedom for $2,000. Their captors had initially demanded $60,000.

Confident that they would soon be freed, he set off for the local mosque to pray. Al-Hayess, who had stayed at home, heard a muffled sound outside.

“It was like when the electric cables have a contact or when the generator plays up and chokes,” she said. When her two sons went outside they found their father lying in a pool of his own blood. Witnesses said he had been shot 15 times from a vehicle carrying National Guard soldiers.

“We did not even bring him home for fear of further retaliation,” said al-Hayess, sobbing more loudly. “He was taken straight from the morgue to the graveyard.”

Omar’s and Ahmad’s ordeal continued. Their captors repeatedly demanded to know which insurgent groups they belonged to. They were also blindfolded and filmed as they marched near a pile of weapons.

The film was broadcast on television and al-Hayess, who recognised her sons, was surprised to hear them described as part of a terrorist group captured by Iraqi security forces.

Following her husband’s murder, al-Hayess moved with her other sons and daughter to her mother’s house in al-Doura. Then, two months after their arrest, Omar and Ahmad were freed.

There were more horrors in store. On August 8, nearly two months after Mohammed’s shooting, al-Hayess’s brother, Mohammed Ibrahim, went to a meeting at the culture ministry. Ibrahim called his son, Saif, later that day to say that he was being held by kidnappers.

During the next few hours the kidnappers contacted Saif several times, initially demanding $100,000, but eventually agreeing to accept $10,000. Saif put the money in a bag and dropped it off at the agreed location.
“We cooked and planned a street celebration,” he said. But his father never returned. A day later the police called the family to say he had been shot and his body was in the morgue.

Just over two weeks ago came the final blow. Al-Hayess was woken by a crash as masked National Guards accompanied by American soldiers stormed the house. Her two younger sons, Ali, 29, and Youssef, 25, were arrested.

She hopes they will be freed. But her fear is that they will join the many Sunni men who have disappeared without trace or those who are tortured, killed and dumped by the roadside.

Sunni mosques and clerics keep files and pictures of men found dead, some with their eyes gouged out, others with drill holes in different parts of their bodies.

Colonel Montazar al-Samuraii, a senior Iraqi officer who fled to Amman a few weeks ago, said that a special force had been created by Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, with the power to detain and interrogate people without referring to the courts.

Last month American troops discovered more than 170 detainees — mainly Sunnis — locked in a ministry bunker in Baghdad. Many had been beaten, were malnourished and had apparently been tortured. Detainees’ bodies were also reportedly found in the bunker. Al-Samuraii claims to know of seven other locations with such bunkers. Jabr has dismissed the allegations as exaggerated.

Al-Hayess, meanwhile, can do little but mourn her husband and brother and pray for the safe return of her sons.

“I don’t know who to go to, who to plead to or who to report to any more,” she said, bursting into tears again. “Even our identity cards and ration cards were confiscated by soldiers.”

from Hala Jaber at The Sunday Times