Baghdad's death row a 'slaughterhouse'

Gallows in Iraqi prison

EACH day Um Ahmad listens to the news for word of hangings. Thursday is Baghdad's usual hanging day. Sunday is the next favourite. On occasion, such as in October when 42 prisoners were executed in a 48-hour period, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are used to clear the backlog on Iraq's death row. So she is never quite sure, and stays at home, listening for word of the latest batch of executions, wondering if her only son, Ahmad, is among them.

"I've been terrified since the last executions," the 59-year-old said of the latest group of hangings, which took this year's toll of judicial killings in Iraq to 170. "I know my son is already wearing the red uniform in Kadhimiya prison, death row, ready for execution. I don't know how much time is left."

Execution days begin before dawn. Groups of Iraqi prisoners dressed in red overalls are led in shackles from their cells to the shadowy confines of the execution chamber in the maximum security prison at al-Kadhimiya, Baghdad. There, before the five noose gallows, they are hooded. Their hands and feet are tied. Then they are hanged, often in batches - a process called "obscene" by UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who described it as "like processing animals in a slaughterhouse".

Families of the condemned men are never informed in advance. They are called afterwards and told to collect the bodies from the morgue. "I have no way of telling when my son may die," said Um Ahmad, a Palestinian born in Iraq who declined to give her full name. "The authorities allow no final visit. The strain is terrible. I barely sleep at night."

Her desperation is given particular acuteness by the documents she shuffles in her hands. One, signed by three judges at the Supreme Court in August 2009, notes there is not enough evidence to prove charges against her son, Ahmad Omar "Amr"'Abd al-Qadir, 31, and recommends his release. Another, signed a year earlier by the director-general of Baghdad's Medical Legal Institute, Munjid al-Rezali, confirms a selection of injuries on Mr Qadir's body supportive of claims that his confession, later withdrawn, was extracted by extensive torture.

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Source: The Australian, December 11, 2013