Mass grave discovery 'justifies war'

May 14 2003

By Evening Gazette

A mass grave outside Baghdad which may contain the remains of up to 15,000 bodies provides justification for the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein's former head of protocol said today. Haitham Rashid Wihaib said he believed the grisly discoveries at al-Mahawil, where so far more than 3,000 human remains have been uncovered, was a "crime against humanity". "This is not just a crime against the Iraqi people, it is a crime against all of humanity," he told GMTV. "It is like the genocide during the Second World War, and in Rwanda, and in other places in the world. "So this really justifies the war against Iraq." Story continues ADVERTISEMENT Earlier yesterday it emerged that Iraqis pulled bound and blindfolded bodies out of a newly-discovered mass grave outside Basra, excavating a site thought to contain the remains of up to 150 Shiite Muslims during Saddam's repression of a 1999 uprising. The site discovered at al-Mahawil, near the city of Hilla, about 56 miles south of Baghdad, appeared to be among the largest found in Iraq since Saddam's government was toppled by the US-led invasion. The relatives of those who have been missing since a Shiite uprising in 1991 was suppressed have been desperately searching for the remains of their loved ones, using tractors and their own hands to dig in the soil. Mr Wihaib said it was well known where the mass graves were in Iraq but talking about them could result in execution under the Saddam regime. Thousands of people were killed during the murderous regime, he said. In Baghdad alone, 60,000 disappeared. He said: "I am very shocked by these pictures in Iraq. It is very well known that there are mass graves of this dictatorial criminal regime of Saddam Hussein everywhere in Iraq. "People know where they are but talking about them would mean you were executed in Iraq." It was reported that the grave contains the bodies of women and children. Rafid al-Husseini, a local Iraqi doctor trying to organise the retrieval of decomposed bodies at al-Mahawil, told the BBC that so far they have found more than 3,000 human remains. But the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based exile group close to the US military, told Associated Press that the graves could contain about 15,000 bodies. There is concern that the site should be treated as a crime scene to provide evidence which could be crucial to the prosecution of the remnants of Saddam's regime. * A new resolution on rebuilding post-war Iraq was being debated today by the UN Security Council. The resolution, tabled by Britain, the US and Spain, proposes coalition control of Iraq for up to a year, including lucrative oil revenues.

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