A brutal justice in Sadr's courts
(Posted on Wed, Oct. 20, 2004)
A brutal justice in Sadr's courts
Hundreds of Iraqis are missing. Many suspected of U.S. ties are believed to have been slain by the cleric's men.
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Inquirer Foreign Staff
NAJAF, Iraq - In a vault three stories beneath the sprawling Shiite Muslim cemetery in the holy city of Najaf, Hatem Khashan awaited his execution.
The Iraqi border policeman's crime was collaborating with the Americans. His judge and jury were henchmen of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the largest Iraqi-bred insurgency, which had been battling U.S. troops in Najaf's center. His sentence, handed down in Sadr's religious court, would be swift, with no appeal.
Khashan, 56, was to be tied facedown on a rickety bed frame in the vault, then beaten with a rock-filled section of garden hose until he was dead.
It would take only three blows; Khashan recalled counting as he watched his captors bludgeon one prisoner after another to death with the rubber tube.
"I kept thinking, this same thing is going to happen to me," he said recently. "All I could do is pray and ask for God's forgiveness."
Khashan was spared. On July 28, a last-minute deal between his commander and Sadr's Mahdi Army militia prompted his release.
Hundreds of others weren't so lucky. Police are still counting the number of Iraqis who were dragged before Sadr's religious court and executed. As many as 300 victims arrested between April and August in Najaf alone are still missing, said Capt. Mohammed Abdul Hussein, head liaison between the Iraqi Interior Ministry and Najaf authorities investigating the court's activities. He asked that his last name not be used.
When police first entered the court, on Aug. 27, they found at least a dozen mutilated and burned bodies inside.
The identities of the dead remain a matter of debate. Authorities declared them victims of Sadr's summary justice. The cleric's advisers said they were Mahdi gunmen killed in battles with the Americans.
Sheikh Ali Smeisim, a top Sadr confidant, dismissed as lies accusations that the missing were Sadr's victims.
"The missing people were likely taken by a number of groups, who continue to prowl the countryside," he said. "They use the Mahdi Army and the court as a place to hang their dirty laundry."
Sadr's courts existed in a handful of Iraqi cities and towns. Originally created by the cleric's late father during Saddam Hussein's era to mediate civil and familial disputes, they had no power to punish.
"What we were trying to do when we established this court was to build something for this society in the Islamic way," said Smeisim, who added that he was one of the original judges.
Other Sadr advisers in U.S. custody said they revived the courts to restore order in a society left lawless by the U.S. invasion.
Capt. Hussein and officials from the Najaf Human Rights Association said the cleric's gunmen used the courts to terrorize people who opposed them.
In April, the courts' focus narrowed to prosecuting Iraqis who were police officers or otherwise deemed to be linked to the U.S.-led coalition. The catalyst appeared to have been an April 4 demonstration by Sadr followers outside the base of a Spanish military force assigned to maintain order in Najaf. Who fired first is disputed, but the subsequent exchange by soldiers under Spanish command and Sadr's gunmen left at least 18 dead and dozens wounded.
After that, black-clad Mahdi militiamen would swoop down on their Iraqi targets, arresting and dragging them before the Najaf court. Khashan and other detainees said they were held without food and water for days, then taken before a cleric to hear the charge, verdict and sentence.
As Sadr used his Friday sermons at the Kufa Mosque to rail that Iraqis working with the coalition or the interim government were spies who must die, less than three miles away, in a two-story mud and brick building, his followers were putting those words into action.
Many, such as Abdul Salam, 37, and his younger brother Hadi were beaten bloody.
Their youngest brother, detained at a separate location, recounted the siblings' tale but asked that his first name and their family name be omitted for fear of retribution.
Before he was seized, Abdul Salam rebuilt schools, using money provided by the coalition. On April 7, Mahdi gunmen came to the family home, taking Hadi and the youngest brother into custody and ordering relatives to tell Abdul Salam he was ordered to appear before the court.
He complied the same day.
Hadi was the last relative to see Abdul Salam, about 12 hours later. He told his family he hardly recognized the bloody, battered man lying in a heap with his hands tied behind his back.
"This is your brother," their mutual captors told Hadi, then beat them both with iron rods. The bound men invoked the name of the prophet Muhammad's descendants for their jailers to stop. The beatings continued.
Five days later, Hadi was released; the next day the youngest brother also was freed, unharmed. Neither received an explanation, nor were they told of Abdul Salam's fate.
"It's like, inside me, I know he has to be" dead, the youngest brother said. "But unless a person sees it with his own eyes, he doesn't want to believe it. There is nothing tangible in our hands for us to believe it."
Fadhil hopes his son is still alive. Amar, his oldest son, was taken away to Sadr's court to face charges of collaborating. It made no sense, said Fadhil, whose last name is being withheld for his safety. He and Amar ran a hotel for Shiite pilgrims visiting the nearby Grand Imam Ali Shrine.
To illustrate his point, the elderly man thumbed through an album featuring photos of Amar at the hotel's grand opening. He agreed to meet a reporter again the next day to discuss his son's case - anything that might help bring him home alive, Fadhil said, his voice cracking and eyes filling with tears.
He soon changed his mind. Moments after the reporter left, Sadr loyalists appeared at the hotel and threatened to hurt other members of his family, Fadhil explained apologetically on the telephone.
Like Fadhil and Abdul Salam's brothers, many relatives of the missing hope their loved ones were spared execution. They cling to rumors that prisoners were carted off to the Baghdad slum of Sadr City or other Sadr strongholds after the cleric and his gunmen surrendered Najaf to the Iraqi police and national guard in late August.
But the Najaf police captain, Hussein, said it was more likely that the victims were dead. Many were taken to the Najaf cemetery, which means finding their remains will be difficult, he said. The cemetery - the world's largest Islamic graveyard, in which crypts often extend deep below ground - was badly damaged during August's battles between U.S. and Sadr forces.
A joint investigation into the court and its victims may conclude as early as this month, Hussein said, but he conceded that it was not likely to bring peace of mind to all the anguished families.
Hatem Khashan, meanwhile, asked rhetorically what should happen to Sadr's gunmen and judges. "Their only just medicine is death," he said.
In early September, six families - including that of Abdul Salam - met with the son of the top Iraqi Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. They were told to drop the matter so that wounds from Sadr's siege of Najaf could heal, Abdul Salam's youngest brother said.
"I don't expect to learn anything from the government about my brother," he said. "The loss of human life here is not important enough."
Contact Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson at snelson@krwashington.com.
(This was reposted from The Philadelphia Inquirer)