Boston Globe: Buried, but not nameless, in Iraq's desert

Boston Globe
by Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
June 29, 2006
View at http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/06/29/buried_but_not_nameless_in_iraqs_desert/

BAGHDAD -- Perhaps they were so terrified they didn't trust the officers who demanded their identification cards, so they hid the cards beneath layers of clothes. Or maybe they sensed their horrible fate and decided against giving up the last legal proof of their lives before gunshots turned them into anonymous corpses to be devoured by the desert.

Whatever their reasons, more than 10 percent of the victims found in mass graves from the Saddam Hussein era that have been formally excavated managed to die with their Iraqi identity cards still on them.

The phenomenon has dramatically altered the investigation into the former regime's alleged crimes by allowing prosecutors to trace the victims to their hometowns and construct narratives of their journeys toward death.

``They had hidden them in secret pockets or sewn them in secret areas, especially the women," said Michael ``Sonny" Trimble, a forensic archeologist who oversees the team exhuming and examining mass graves linked to the former regime, including the Anfal campaign in which Kurdish villagers were deported from their homes and later executed.

``They were coming from the north," said Trimble, who is attached to the US Army Corps of Engineers. ``They were told they were being resettled. But they knew."

Trimble spoke this week during the first media tour of the laboratories of the Mass Graves Team at the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, the law enforcement agency attached to the American Embassy that is helping an Iraqi court prosecute Hussein and his deputies in connection with human rights abuses.

The nine-tent compound outside Baghdad includes digital technology used to scan bones and map grave sites and is staffed by international specialists who resurrect the lives and deaths of war crimes victims.

Team members say the women's successful efforts to withhold identity cards might ultimately help Iraqi prosecutors win the upcoming Anfal trial, in which Hussein is accused of murdering 180,000 Kurdish villagers.

``We can go back to the area where the identity cards were issued [and"> we can find survivors," said Raad Juhi, chief investigative judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, which will begin proceedings on Anfal after Hussein's current trial ends. ``We can find out about mechanisms and dates."

The laminated identification cards, known as gensiya, have already helped the Mass Graves Team prepare the Anfal case, officials said.

Unlike the trial of Hussein and seven deputies in the killings in the Shi'ite village of Dujail, now in closing arguments, the Anfal case will focus on forensic evidence amassed by Trimble and his team.

The discovery of the gensiya allowed prosecutors to begin tying bodies to specific hometowns and surviving witnesses, who will be called as trial witnesses against Hussein.

Since starting operations in August 2004, Trimble has unearthed and dissected six mass grave sites in northwestern and southern Iraq. In all, the bodies of about 335 of the tens of thousands of victims of Hussein's regime believed to be buried have been unearthed and analyzed.

Many of the largest mass grave sites throughout Iraq have been damaged by relatives searching for loved ones, or they contain bodies that are too fresh to be efficiently exhumed and analyzed, Trimble explained. Getting a total count of victims might take decades, he said.

Tips from locals have pointed investigators in the direction of some grave sites.

For example, Bedouins tipped off US Marines about a key Anfal mass grave site in Muthana province near the southern city of Samawa shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion, said one US embassy official.

Using mapping software, Trimble's team creates a digital model of each site, looking for geographic anomalies.

The scientists ascertain the size of a grave with test trenches. Backhoes remove the first layer of dirt, but diggers use hand tools once they near the bodies. Often, the victims are buried under enormous volumes of sand and soil.

A mass grave site in Nineweh containing 64 men allegedly killed during the Anfal campaign was buried under more than 10 feet of dirt.

``These people were not to be found again," Trimble said. ``That was clear."

Before removing corpses, Trimble's team maps a mass grave site by marking off 40 points around each body and storing the location in a computer database. Using metal detectors, the investigators locate and record each bullet shell and casing.

Once the information is compiled, the scientists create three-dimensional maps showing the bodies, casings, and bullets, and suggesting narratives for what may have happened during the mass murder.

The bodies then are sealed into bags, placed into plastic boxes and flown by helicopter to the Forensic Analysis Facility.

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