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American Morning
Mass Grave
Aired May 14, 2003 - 08:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. Marines say it was like looking into Hell. They were talking about the mass graves found in Iraq, and it may hold as many as 11,000 bodies. The site is in Muwahill (ph), about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
A word of warning now, that what we are about to show you may be disturbing to some of our viewers.
Jane Arraf is there -- Jane.
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, no matter what the numbers are, it turned out to be there are a lot of dramas here, individual dramas being played out. Now, each of these plastic bags that we're seeing actually holds what used to be somebody's brother, or father or cousin. Some of them actually children, some of them women by all accounts, many of them soldiers.
Now, these have been unearthed in the last few days. People around here always knew that this existed, but they were forbidden from talking about it, the same way that they were forbidden from mourning their relatives when they were killed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
And these are a very particular sort of tragedies going on here. These were Shia Muslims, who appear to have been rounded up after the Shia uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. Many of them appeared to have been killed in a space of two days, and their bodies dumped into graves like these ones that we're seeing here.
Now behind us, you can see a mass of people who are at open grave sites. They're still digging up these bodies.
What it looks like here, there are several hundred bodies here, but many of them have not been identified. We're seeing relatives coming trying to identify them by their clothing, by little bits of things, like the brand of cigarettes they smoked, the last sweater that they wore had when they last saw them when they were taken away. And it's an impossible task. There are very few of the people who have been identified, and they're just laying out here, but they do keep coming up out of the ground, and relatives keep swarming here, desperately hoping they can finally find out what happened to their loved ones -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Now, Jane, they obviously have no sophisticated means of identifying the body. You mentioned bits of clothing, cigarettes -- these are the only ways in which they can try to identify those bodies there? ARRAF: This is definitely not a high-tech operation. The way they've been dug up is actually a bulldozer has come, and just scooped out great mounds of earth, along with skeletons. Now these skeletons are sort of separated and put together in these plastic bags, and people just come and walk by. You can see some of them behind me. Just trying to see anything that will identify these people.
Many of them have IDs, the identification they were required to carry as Iraqis, but they're faded from exposure of having been underground. So there is really no easy way of identifying these people -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: So it is your feeling, Jane, that most of the people who have come out there really don't feel like they have any hope of identifying whether it is any of their loved ones that are in those piles there?
ARRAF: We actually just heard from one investigator for Human Rights Watch, that he had spoken to people who had taken away one body, because the body had on it a pack of cigarettes, the same brand that their brother used to smoke. Now that's an indication that people are so desperate to have something to bury, so desperate to finally know what happened to these people who have been missing for so long, that they're willing to accept almost anything. There's quite a lot of anger here. People have been coming up and saying, see, this is what Saddam did, and they have not been able to talk about it before now. To talk about it would have meant they might have suffered much the same fate as these people are facing in the plastic bags on the ground right now -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, Jane Arraf, thank you very much. And so many of these people had been for so long trying to convince people that they know some atrocities were carried out involving their loved ones and now possibly some evidence. The only problem is trying to figure out if their loved ones are among the pile.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 14, 2003 - 08:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. Marines say it was like looking into Hell. They were talking about the mass graves found in Iraq, and it may hold as many as 11,000 bodies. The site is in Muwahill (ph), about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
A word of warning now, that what we are about to show you may be disturbing to some of our viewers.
Jane Arraf is there -- Jane.
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, no matter what the numbers are, it turned out to be there are a lot of dramas here, individual dramas being played out. Now, each of these plastic bags that we're seeing actually holds what used to be somebody's brother, or father or cousin. Some of them actually children, some of them women by all accounts, many of them soldiers.
Now, these have been unearthed in the last few days. People around here always knew that this existed, but they were forbidden from talking about it, the same way that they were forbidden from mourning their relatives when they were killed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
And these are a very particular sort of tragedies going on here. These were Shia Muslims, who appear to have been rounded up after the Shia uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. Many of them appeared to have been killed in a space of two days, and their bodies dumped into graves like these ones that we're seeing here.
Now behind us, you can see a mass of people who are at open grave sites. They're still digging up these bodies.
What it looks like here, there are several hundred bodies here, but many of them have not been identified. We're seeing relatives coming trying to identify them by their clothing, by little bits of things, like the brand of cigarettes they smoked, the last sweater that they wore had when they last saw them when they were taken away. And it's an impossible task. There are very few of the people who have been identified, and they're just laying out here, but they do keep coming up out of the ground, and relatives keep swarming here, desperately hoping they can finally find out what happened to their loved ones -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Now, Jane, they obviously have no sophisticated means of identifying the body. You mentioned bits of clothing, cigarettes -- these are the only ways in which they can try to identify those bodies there? ARRAF: This is definitely not a high-tech operation. The way they've been dug up is actually a bulldozer has come, and just scooped out great mounds of earth, along with skeletons. Now these skeletons are sort of separated and put together in these plastic bags, and people just come and walk by. You can see some of them behind me. Just trying to see anything that will identify these people.
Many of them have IDs, the identification they were required to carry as Iraqis, but they're faded from exposure of having been underground. So there is really no easy way of identifying these people -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: So it is your feeling, Jane, that most of the people who have come out there really don't feel like they have any hope of identifying whether it is any of their loved ones that are in those piles there?
ARRAF: We actually just heard from one investigator for Human Rights Watch, that he had spoken to people who had taken away one body, because the body had on it a pack of cigarettes, the same brand that their brother used to smoke. Now that's an indication that people are so desperate to have something to bury, so desperate to finally know what happened to these people who have been missing for so long, that they're willing to accept almost anything. There's quite a lot of anger here. People have been coming up and saying, see, this is what Saddam did, and they have not been able to talk about it before now. To talk about it would have meant they might have suffered much the same fate as these people are facing in the plastic bags on the ground right now -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, Jane Arraf, thank you very much. And so many of these people had been for so long trying to convince people that they know some atrocities were carried out involving their loved ones and now possibly some evidence. The only problem is trying to figure out if their loved ones are among the pile.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
