Global Policy Forum

By Rory McCarthy

Ali Abid Hassan has had 12 long years to consider the virtues of revenge and forgiveness. He has preserved in chilling detail the memory of the night in March 1991 when he should have been executed by Saddam Hussein's firing squad - and how, badly injured but alive, he crawled out from under a heap of bodies and scrambled to freedom. Immediately after the fall of the regime two months ago, he was filled with a bitter anger and a thirst for vengeance. Since then, like all Iraqis, he has wrestled with his conscience, and, like some, his temper has calmed. While many still yearn for retribution, others are beginning the slow process of bringing to court the men responsible for three decades of unimaginable human rights abuses. "We need to see justice and sometimes we just need to forgive," said Ali, 39.

In March 1991, Ali and his brother Haider, who was then 19, were arrested during a crackdown against the nationwide rebellion that was encouraged by the then US president, George Bush, in the weeks after the first Gulf war. They were taken with hundreds of other prisoners, blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs, to a muddy field about 15 minutes drive outside the small town of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.

"We were all in the army then and they told us we were returning to our units," he said. "Soon we started to get a feeling of what would really happen."

Ali can still find the exact spot by a canal filled with tall, green reeds where he was taken. At that point on the path today are the now familiar tokens of Iraq's mass graves: some vertebrae, a rib bone, one button and 11 long, creamy-brown teeth.

"There were three of us and they told us to sit down there," he said pointing to the side of the path. A gunman with a Kalashnikov executed the man to his left and the man to his right. Inexplicably Ali was shot only in the right thigh; he was badly wounded but alive.

He lay silent in excruciating pain as a mechanical digger lifted their three bodies and dropped them among the tall green reeds in the canal. They were covered with dirt and left to rot, but Ali crawled free and escaped. "I was saved by God for a reason that I will never know," he said. His brother was executed that night and his body has never been found.

Immediately after the fall of the regime Ali and a group of other men in Hilla found one of the Ba'ath party officials who had been responsible for rounding up more than 3,000 Shia Muslims who were executed and buried in two mass graves at Hilla, the largest so far discovered in Iraq. "We chased him and caught him," he said. "We were very angry. 'What am I supposed to do with you after what you have done to us?' I said to him."

Ali and the others wanted to force a tractor tyre over his body and set it alight, in the same way that they had watched three prisoners executed during the 1991 crackdown.

"He was sitting on the ground and begging for for giveness and mercy. We really were about to kill him, but I stopped. We just couldn't. We decided to let him go."

Most of the senior Ba'athists in Hilla have now fled. Several of their homes have been attacked, and in one case four children of a Ba'athist were apparently killed and his wife badly injured when a grenade was thrown over their wall.

But there are some in the town who are working to bring these men to court. Ahmed al-Barrak, a lawyer and an official at the town's human rights as sociation, is working on the first cases.

Already an investigating judge has taken sworn testimonies from three witnesses naming several individuals in the area who are known to have taken part in the executions.

The documents are now carefully stored in the judge's safe. Prosecutors have also found a secret Ba'ath party book titled In Order Not to Forget, which extols the 1991 crackdown and names several men from Hilla who took part in "repressing the rebellion in the chapter of treason and betrayal".

"These Ba'ath party members are still in our community and we must find a way to deal with them," said Mr Barrak. "Everyone who has killed must be brought to court."

First on the list will be Mohammed Jawad An-Neifus, an elderly and illiterate tribal leader who lived a few hundred yards from the mass graves and who played a vital part in organising the killings. He was arrested by US marines on April 26 but in a blunder was released from a detention camp in the southern town of Umm Qasr on May 18. The US military has admitted it is "solely responsible" for releasing him and has put out a $25,000 (£15,000) reward for his recapture.

Mr An-Neifus was one of the names mentioned in the Ba'ath party book, which described him as "distinguished" for his work in "eliminating the rebellion" in Hilla. Prosecuting lawyers in Hilla say he was rewarded with money and cars. He was also one of the individuals identified in the testimony of the three witnesses. His three sons, Saleem, Zaed and Basim, are being held by US troops, though several of his nephews still live in the large family compound in the village of al-Boualwan.

"My uncle is an old man and he is completely innocent," said Khadum Jasim Jawad, 41. "The crimes were committed by the military commanders not by him. All the people here know my uncle and they want him to return to his home."

Syed Jabbar Syed Mohsin, who owns the land in which Hilla's largest mass grave was dug, is one of the chief witnesses who will be used in the case against Mr An-Neifus and others. He saw the tribal leader at the grave site during the month between March 7 and April 6, 1991, when the executions took place.

Syed Mohsin watched hidden in the bushes nearby as prisoners were brought in batches to the site, arriving regularly each day at 9am, 2pm and 5pm. It would take less than half an hour to throw the prisoners into trenches, women and children among them, shoot them and bury the bodies. "An-Neifus was there and he took part," he said. "I saw him with my own eyes."

Several hundred unclaimed bodies remain at the site today.

"For years, every time I went to my bed I thought what I could do for the dead," Syed Mohsin said. "I was waiting for the regime to fall so that maybe I could do something for them.

"The religious authorities have told us not to take revenge. Either the people who did this must be brought to court or we should ask for authorisation to kill them ourselves."

Before the war many Iraqis warned of how the collapse of the regime would be followed by weeks of bloodletting and lynching. There have been killings, but surprisingly few.

It is still unclear how easily communities will accept the Ba'ath party members, some of whom bear little guilt, others whose hands are stained with the blood of hundreds.

Ali Abid Hassan is still distraught about the death of his brother. Without the body the family have not been able to hold a funeral. Mr Hassan now carries in his top pocket a list of four Ba'ath party officials he saw taking part in executions.

"I have prepared this list because I want to give it to an American general," he said. "I want these people punished. I don't want anyone to forget what happened to us."

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