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III. The Documentary Evidence

Looting and Destruction of Documents

In the chaos that ensued with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, U.S.-led coalition forces, Iraqi opposition groups, and individuals seized hundreds of thousands of Iraqi state documents from government buildings, Ba`th Party headquarters, offices of the former intelligence and security apparatuses, military garrisons and other premises across Baghdad.  Sensitive documents were later found in public buildings such as schools, as well as in private homes, apparently having been removed by officials of the former government, ostensibly for safe keeping, and then abandoned as military defeat became imminent.  Similar scenes were witnessed in other cities and towns across the country.  Former Iraqi government officials shredded, burned, or otherwise destroyed many  documents during the preceding weeks, while countless others were destroyed as a result of the wartime aerial bombing campaign.  The widespread looting and wanton destruction of government property by Iraqis in the days and weeks after the war led to further destruction of documents that had survived the war itself.


Documents strewn on desk and floor in security prison in Kirkuk, April 2003,
the day after the city fell to Kurdish and U.S forces.
(c) 2003 Eric Stover/Human Rights Watch

Hundreds of thousands of documents nevertheless remained intact as sources of information about the practices of the Saddam Hussein government.  It was an established practice of that government to record the brutal repression of the Iraqi population by its security and intelligence apparatuses in minute detail.  Human Rights Watch’s own work on the study and analysis of some eighteen metric tons of Iraqi state documents seized in northern Iraq by Kurdish political parties during the 1991 uprising demonstrated that those records, which detailed state policy involving mass executions, large-scale “disappearances,” targeted assassinations, torture, forced expulsion or deportation of civilians, and other egregious abuses, were largely accurate.    Its assessment of those documents over a two-year period between 1992 and 1994, together with its findings from several missions to Iraqi Kurdistan in search of corroborating forensic and testimonial evidence, enabled Human Rights Watch to argue that the 1988 Anfal campaign against the Kurds constituted genocide.2

Despite the potential value of Iraqi state documents in yielding information that could assist in bringing to justice perpetrators of serious past crimes, U.S. and coalition authorities apparently put no effective plan in place to secure them in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Hussein government.  While U.S.-led coalition forces claimed to have since seized very large numbers of documents, many others were pilfered, looted, or otherwise destroyed needlessly, resulting in the loss of potentially vital information.  Some of this destruction took place in the context of the widespread general looting in Baghdad and elsewhere. In many cases, the looting was carried out within sight of coalition military forces, which had apparently received no instructions about securing government documents or protecting the premises in which they were found.  Additionally, other documents that survived or were not subjected to looting in a number of locations lay strewn about for days and sometimes weeks without being taken into coalition custody. 

Human Rights Watch researchers witnessed such scenes in the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in April 2003. When they visited government locations including former security and intelligence offices, some of which had been targeted during the aerial bombing campaign, they found thousands of files still intact in filing cabinets or on shelving units. Human Rights Watch researchers witnessed Iraqis walking into government buildings. Their motives appear to vary from curiosity to a desire to find documents that would answer their questions regarding “disappeared” relatives.  At a girls’ secondary school in the al-Qadisiyya II neighborhood of Kirkuk, Human Rights Watch came across some ten large canvas sacks full of documents stacked in one of the classrooms.  The guard working at the school told Human Rights Watch that Ba`th Party officials had brought the documents several days before the start of the aerial campaign, and as such he presumed them to be valuable.  He said no one had been sent to protect them or take them away for safekeeping, adding that he could not guarantee their safety for much longer.3

In Kirkuk in mid-April 2003, Human Rights Watch visited a former security forces detention center and found an even larger number of documents, including hundreds of individual files on Iraqis who had apparently been held there in the past or had been kept under surveillance.  Most were piled up on the floor in a state of disarray and were quickly coming apart as more and more people walked over them. Others had been thrown out into the garden and exposed to the elements.  A guard at the premises told Human Rights Watch that Kurdish political parties had already been to the site on April 10, the day Kirkuk fell, and had taken whatever documents they were interested in.  In the courtyard there were sacks full of other documents which had been readied for collection by KDP officials, the guard said.  Human Rights Watch also talked to several Kurds who had wandered into the courtyard, one of whom said he had found several CD-Roms on the premises purportedly showing the systematic rape of female detainees.  He said he had taken them to his home for “safekeeping,” but had not reported his find to any officials and appeared reluctant to give them up.

Such scenes were repeated in many other locations across Iraq, and the consequent loss of vital evidence for future prosecutions is incalculable.  As Human Rights Watch warned U.S. and U.K. officials at the time,4 the failure to protect security archives from looting and destruction also had the potential of contributing to retaliatory violence and vengeance killings, since the archives could identify tens of thousands of security agents and informers by name.  Yet in Basra, for example, British officials publicly stated that they allowed the looting of Ba`th Party buildings, which housed important archives, as a means of showing the population that the party had lost control of the city.5 The ease with which Human Rights Watch was able to enter government buildings demonstrates how lax coalition security was in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Hussein government.  

The preservation of state documents are additionally vital for the survivors of over twenty-five years of state atrocities, since they can very likely yield information that could establish the fate of many of their missing relatives.  They are also important for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were forcibly expelled from their homes and became internally displaced, or were deported to neighboring Iran, in implementation of state policy.  In the majority of such cases, documents in their possession – including citizenship and nationality documents, ration cards, property deeds and the expulsion or deportation orders themselves – were systematically destroyed or confiscated by Ba`thist officials, leaving the victims unable to establish their identities, place of birth, ethnicity or ownership of property.  For many such people, official government records would be all they have to establish both their identities and those of their children, and to have the possibility of submitting claims in the future for restitution of property and other rights.6

In Baghdad and other major cities, the main caches of seized documents included archives of the Ba`th Party, its Regional Command and various associated organizations; archives of the former security and intelligence agencies, including the General Security Directorate (Mudiriyyat al-Amn al-‘Amma), General Intelligence Directorate (Mudiriyyat al-Mukhabarat al-‘Amma), Military Intelligence (al-Istikhbarat al-‘Askariyya) and other affiliated apparatuses; archives of government ministries and their sub-departments, including census departments located in major cities; and archives of the armed forces and various paramilitary groups.  Little is known about the work undertaken on the millions of pages of documents which U.S. authorities said coalition authorities had taken into custody– particularly those documents which were flown out to Qatar for study and analysis by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) and other U.S. agencies.7  Requests by Human Rights Watch to make contact with ISG representatives, said to include U.K. and Australian experts, were not granted.  U.S. Justice Department officials would only say that the ISG’s priority in going through and analyzing Iraqi state documents were war crimes, and that the work they had carried out thus far was “impressive.” “Good work is being done but it is classified,” they told Human Rights Watch.8  Some Iraqis associated with the Iraq Special Tribunal are said to be concerned that the ISG was entering the documents in its custody into a classified database in a manner that might make it difficult for the Tribunal prosecutors to access later.

Documents Held by Iraqi Political Groups and NGOs

Sizeable archival collections were also seized by Iraqi political groups. In some cases they had planned to seize the documents ahead of the war and were therefore able to keep them relatively intact.  Among the principal groups are the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Iraqi National Accord (INA), and the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP).  One priority of all such groups has been to search through relevant documents in an effort to verify or uncover information about their members and their relatives arrested by the former Iraqi government’s security and intelligence apparatuses and, in many cases, clues as to where the victims had been buried.  In some instances the documents yielded precise and accurate information about the location of mass graves where victims who were arrested and subsequently “disappeared” in custody were buried.  One of the more well-known cases, for example, was that of an estimated 5,000-8,000 Barzani Kurds who were rounded up by the Iraqi military from so-called resettlement camps in the vicinity of Arbil in 1983 and were never seen again.9  The victims, all males aged twelve or over, were believed to have been held prisoner for several months and then killed.  During political negotiations with Iraqi government officials over the years, Kurdish leaders asked for information on the fate and whereabouts of the missing Barzanis, but Iraqi government officials consistently refused to give an answer.  In June 2003 KDP leader Mas`ud Barzani told Human Rights Watch that official documents seized after the 2003 war had indicated the precise locations of two mass graves, located in Iraq’s southern desert, where some 2,500 of the victims were said to be buried.  For fear of the graves being tampered with before forensic exhumations could be carried out, the precise locations of the two sites remain confidential, but Barzani said initial forensic assessments indicated that the information in the documents was accurate.10


Kurds examine documents in a Ba`th Party building in Kirkuk the day
after the city fell to Kurdish and U.S. forces.
(c) 2003 Eric Stover/Human Rights Watch

Other political parties told Human Rights Watch that they had significant numbers of documents in their possession, but Human Rights Watch was not able to gain access to those documents and therefore cannot verify what it was told.  One such group was the Islamic Da`wa Party (Hizb al-Da`wa al-Islamiyya), which did not clarify the  number of documents in its custody.  A member of the party’s Political Bureau said most the documents in question had been seized in April and May 2003 from different locations around Baghdad, principally Ba`th Party offices, including one building previously used by the Ba`th Party’s Military Bureau.  He told Human Rights Watch that some of the documents pertained to Ba`th Party organizations, but that the majority consisted of archival material of the former General Security Directorate in Baghdad, including material relating to executions dating back to the early 1970s.11 

The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) said that it too had a large number of documents in its possession but again without specifying the quantity.  Members of the ICP’s Martyrs and Missing Persons Commission said most documents in their custody related to the General Security Directorate and the General Intelligence Directorate in Baghdad.  They were apparently acquired during the looting frenzy that took place in the weeks following the fall of Baghdad.  Human Rights Watch was told that ICP members did not enter the designated buildings thought to house these documents; rather, they paid looters sums of money to bring out the documents for them.  Their principal interest was in acquiring archives relating to the former Iraqi government’s campaign against ICP members since the early 1960s.12 

A third political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), gave Human Rights Watch detailed information about the state archives in its custody (amount, provenance, method of acquisition, and information on the contents of key files pertaining to former security, intelligence and military institutions).  However, the then head of the PUK’s intelligence apparatus, ‘Umar Fattah, requested that such information be kept confidential.13  Human Rights Watch was not given access to the main stack of PUK documents, and was therefore not in a position to verify what it had been told, but it was able to examine some original documents being processed at the time by staff of the PUK’s human rights ministry in Sulaimaniyya (see below).

 NGOs and other groups also have in their possession Iraqi state archives, mostly seized in the early days after the fall of the former government.  Of the NGOs, by far the largest cache is in the hands of the Association of Free Prisoners (Jam’iyyat al-Sujana’ al-Ahrar - AFP),14 which claims to have some eighteen million documents.  One of the AFP’s co-founders told Human Rights Watch that the majority of these documents pertained to the archives of the former General Security Directorate in Baghdad, which he and his colleagues found soon after the fall of Baghdad following a tip-off as to their whereabouts.  A smaller number of documents in the AFP’s collection were said to have come from a branch of the former Military Intelligence.15  Initially, the AFP gave priority to scouring the many pages of documents searching for lists names of Iraqis who had been executed over the years by the Saddam Hussein government.16  When Human Rights Watch visited the AFP’s premises on various occasions in May and June 2003, it found scores of people with relatives missing – and presumed dead – who had come looking for confirmation of their worst fears.  The fact very few political prisoners emerged alive after the fall of the government had compounded those fears.  Lists of executed persons were pinned onto the walls of the AFP building, together with photographs found in the files of persons said to have been executed, in the hope that enquiring relatives could identify them.  By the end of July 2003, the AFP was claiming that it had been able to confirm – largely through information extracted from the General Security Directorate archives – the execution of some 300,000 people.17  At this writing, there was no independent verification of this figure.

Several other NGOs, all but one established since the 2003 war, reportedly had smaller caches of documents in their possession.18  Human Rights Watch visited several of the Baghdad-based groups during February and March 2004, and found in the main that the documents in question were either copies of originals, or had been provided them by families of missing or executed persons (such as official death certificates attesting to the execution of the persons in question).  One group, the League of Iraqi Political Prisoners (Rabitat al-Sujana’ al-Siyasiyyin al-‘Iraqiyyin), showed Human Rights Watch samples of what appeared to be original documents, but it was unclear what the total number of such documents was.  According to the group’s director, most of the documents were seized from a building used by the former Iraqi Air Force Intelligence in Baghdad.19  One other NGO is known to possess significant archives, the Iraq Memory Foundation (Mu’assasat al-Dhakira al-‘Iraqiyya - IMF), a Baghdad-based group founded by Kan’an Makiya.20  It currently has in its custody archives of the Ba`th Party’s Regional Command, an estimated 2.5 million pages of documents, in addition to other materials. 

By and large, access to Iraqi state archives in the hands of political parties and NGOs alike has remained relatively restricted – their representatives say their collections were being kept in “secure locations” elsewhere.  As such, it was difficult to assess the number and type of documents, their provenance, the extent to which the chain of custody had been preserved, the conditions in which they have been kept, and the manner in which they have been handled, organized and classified.   What Human Rights Watch did see and learn, however, gave rise to serious concern about the integrity of many of these documents in terms of their potential evidentiary value in trial proceedings.  The complete failure to take any steps to prevent or minimize the extensive looting and wanton destruction of government buildings in those crucial early days in April 2003 led to the widespread removal of state archives from government buildings by unknown individuals or groups, and which are now virtually impossible to trace.  Foreign journalists covering the unfolding events in Iraq, who were frequently among the first at the scene, reportedly removed samples of documents which were then taken out of the country.21 

Realization of the potential value of the archives itself gave rise to a thriving trade in the sale and purchase of documents early on, a practice which reportedly still continues.  The representatives of three Iraqi political parties admitted to Human Rights Watch that they had purchased documents—in some cases on the open market, in other cases when approached by individuals hoping to make a quick sale.22  One estimated that the number of documents bought through individual sales accounted for as much as forty percent of his party’s total collection.  Under these conditions, the likelihood of faked or forged material being injected into the documentation pool becomes very high.  None of the political party representatives involved in the purchase of documents had an adequate response when asked about methods they employed to check the authenticity of documents they acquired in this manner.  Hassan Mneimneh, the IMF’s Documentation Director, told Human Rights Watch that “it was essentially the unvetted sale of documents, and what you got was purely a question of pot luck.  In July last year the going rate was $100 per kilo, but nowadays you could pay up to $1,500 to $2,500 for a few pages of documents.”23  He warned that as long as stocks of documents remained accessible, accompanied by market demand, the trade would continue and thereby further affecting the integrity of the state archives in terms of provenance, authenticity and chain of custody.24

Handling of Documents

Of equal concern has been the way in which many documents have been handled.   Neither political parties nor NGOs have had the requisite expertise, and in many cases the resources and tools, to handle documents in the manner most likely to ensure their evidentiary value for future trials.  According to Mneimneh, documents have been wrongfully processed, reshuffled, written on, and inadvertently destroyed (such as through fire) simply because those handling them have not followed correct procedures.25 

During its visit to the offices of the Association of Free Prisoners in August 2003, Human Rights Watch was shown into a garage space where thousands upon thousands of documents were piled up on top of each other in haphazard fashion, mountain-like, reaching almost to the ceiling.  The floor was strewn with other documents such that anyone walking into the room would necessarily step over them.  Papers from individual files had come become loose, others were torn or otherwise destroyed, and photographic materials had also become detached from their original files.  The director of the League of Iraqi Political Prisoners told Human Rights Watch that “at the beginning we were naïve because we used to give original files to individuals or families who came to ask for information on missing relatives, then we realized that we were absolutely wrong and stopped giving out files.  On the contrary, our policy now is trying to obtain as many documents from the families themselves.”26 

At the human rights ministry in Sulaimaniyya, Human Rights Watch observed the team of workers who were in the process of sorting and categorizing documents pertaining to the former Iraqi government’s Arabization policy.  Though it was a well-intentioned effort to extract relevant information from them, original files were being dismantled without having been scanned, and certain papers extracted from them and re-filed under separate categories devised by the documentation team.  The original files containing these documents were discarded.  Ministry staff assured Human Rights Watch that there was method to their system, and that they kept detailed records of what papers had been removed from the files, enabling them to reinsert them at a later date.27  The lack of necessary expertise in the processing of documents was nevertheless acknowledged.  Salah Rashid, the PUK’s human rights minister, told Human Rights Watch: “The problem is that we are not a scientific institution capable of the study and analysis of documents.  I have spoken to the German foreign ministry about assistance in this regard, but they said they were not prepared to work with the Americans.  The solution is for us to send Kurds to Germany for training there.”28

During discussions held with representatives of political parties as to how documents in their custody were being managed, Human Rights Watch was also told that there was a certain amount of “exchange” of files taking place between them.  This applied in particular to documents containing information about arrests and executions of political activists belonging to the various political parties.  The extent to which there was method to those types of exchanges, including the supervision of the document transfers and the keeping of detailed records in order to preserve the chain of custody, remains unclear.


Documents held by the Iraq Memorial Foundation in Baghdad.
(c) 2003 Eric Stover/Human Rights Watch

Among the groups holding significant state archives in their custody, only the Iraq Memory Foundation appeared to have the requisite experience and expertise for their management, based on its staff’s previous work on both Iraqi state archives seized during the 1991 uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan and those relating to Iraq’s 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait.  Human Rights Watch visited the site where the IMF’s archives were being kept, and was told that all the documents found on the original site had been removed under supervision, kept in their original condition, and filed in the same order in which they had been found.  There were strict instructions that their contents remain untouched, the intention being that they would only need to be handled once during the scanning process.29  By February 2004, the documents had been in IMF custody for some six months, but no work had been done on them due to lack of resources. 

The IMF told Human Rights Watch it had repeatedly appealed to both U.S. and CPA officials for funding to support their work, but despite early expressions of interest no such support came through.30  In August 2003, the IMF publicly called for the formation of a document collection task force in collaboration with the CPA to determine status and agree on approaches, the unification of norms and standards in document processing, and a centralization of document tagging and scanning efforts.31  It proposed its management services and the sharing of its expertise in this field, particularly as regards the preservation of archives, the establishment of protocols for document selection, and the devising of classification schemes – along lines similar to work already done on the North Iraq Dataset and the Kuwait Dataset.  The CPA declined to join forces with the IMF and elected to set up an alternative institution – with functions and goals akin to those of the IMF – to “memorialize” the victims of the former Iraqi government’s repressive policies.32 

As with the state archives currently in the custody of the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group based in Qatar, little is known of the work already undertaken by the CPA, before it was formally dissolved on June 28, 2004, on the processing of documents in its custody in Baghdad.  In July 2003, CPA officials told Human Rights Watch of plans to establish a Bureau of Missing Persons that they would initially manage and then hand over to the Iraqis.  The function of the Bureau would be to establish a database of missing persons from information received from a wide variety of sources, including state archives and physical evidence.33  Approaches to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) to assist in establishing the Bureau was met with a lukewarm response, according to CPA officials, which then requested the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to play a lead role in this regard.34  There were also plans to set up a Central Evidence Warehouse that would house both documentary and physical evidence relating to serious past crimes of the Saddam Hussein government. 

The following month, in August 2003, the CPA told Human Rights Watch that discussions with the IGC were held regarding the creation of a National Archive where the documents would be housed long-term, with the establishment of a consortium of local NGOs and foundations to take a lead role in managing it.  The CPA said they had also proposed seeking the assistance of international experts to assist Iraqis in the process of evidence gathering and analysis, there being “virtually no investigative capacity in the country.”35

Role of the CPA

Six months later, in February 2004, only limited progress had been made on these fronts.  The CPA told Human Rights Watch that it was still “working on developing a bureau of missing persons with the [Iraqi] Ministry of Human Rights,”  which is now charged with this responsibility.36  A warehouse had been found to house the documentary and physical evidence but funding it remained a problem.  No further progress had been made regarding the creation of a National Archive.  However, in apparent recognition of the potential value of state archives being held in non-U.S. hands, namely Iraqi political parties and local NGOs, the CPA had by this time increased its efforts to ensure that these archives be housed under one roof, and was working towards making the Iraqi human rights ministry act as the central repository.37  The CPA told Human Rights Watch that the IGC would be issuing a request for the documents, and although “it has not been put in writing, a request has already been made by the human rights minister.”38 

Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of a letter addressed to the IGC, dated December 30, 2003, and signed by the then Human Rights Minister, ‘Abd al-Baset Turki Sa’id.  In it, the minister underscores the importance of gathering state archives “within a legal framework” and requests the IGC to consider the enactment of an order requiring NGOs and other groups known to possess sizeable state archives to hand them over to his ministry or face criminal penalties for non-compliance.  A draft Order was attached to the minister’s letter for the IGC’s consideration, Article 3 of which provided for “imprisonment not exceeding seven years and not less than five years, and of fines not exceeding ten million Iraqi dinars and not less than five million Iraqi dinars” for persons who refuse to hand over state archives or who participate in or incite such action, and that the more severe penalty will apply if such actions result in the loss or destruction of the documents. 

Copies of this letter were sent out to the relevant NGOs, whose representatives told Human Rights Watch they had either made strong protests about it or had decided to ignore it.  Some objected to the choice of the human rights ministry as the central repository, while others did not want to participate in such a scheme under the aegis of the CPA, and preferred to wait until a sovereign Iraqi government was in place.  Officials of political parties with their own state archives collections told Human Rights Watch that they had not received such a letter and were not aware of its contents.  The CPA, for its part, acknowledged that this had probably not been the most effective approach to have taken, but that they would continue to push for a law regulating the possession and use of state archives, and which may still provide for criminal penalties for non-compliance.39  At this writing, no such law had been enacted.

CPA officials closely involved with the preparation of documentary evidence said in February 2004 that despite a series of setbacks further attempts to negotiate access with NGOs and political parties to the state archives in their possession would continue, and that “if we come up with an understanding that they will make the documents available to us then that will be an achievement.”40  They also confirmed that accessing funds from the Supplemental Budget approved by the U.S. Congress for their projects had contributed to slowing down progress, and that most of the work done up to February 2004 had been funded by USAID.41 A USAID representative told Human Rights Watch that since September 2003, funds had been provided for the building of a secure facility for the housing of state archives and the hiring of relevant staff.42 The appropriation from the supplemental funding had enabled a documentation pilot project to begin, involving the setting up of a basic database, and the hiring by January 2004 of an evidence custodian with prior experience working on documentation in the context of both the ICTY and ICTR.    Peter Boyles, the evidence custodian, told Human Rights Watch in mid-February 2004 that his aim was to enable the scanning of one million pages of documents per month, and that the state archives would be approached selectively, giving priority to those documents most pertinent to the forthcoming trials.  He underscored the importance of the Iraqi Special Tribunal having access to remaining original documents as the earliest possible opportunity, given concerns about issues relating to authenticity and chain of custody.43

By late March 2004, however, U.S. Justice Department officials were still saying that decisions had yet to be made as to how to approach the processing of Iraqi state documents—in other words, whether to adopt the “ICTY approach” of going through all documentation available, or whether a more “strategic approach” involving heavier reliance on identifying and prioritizing  documents  that might prove pertinent for prosecutors in building cases against the defendants: “We need to go out and assess the documents with translators, the official said.  “We need to be very strategic about new documentation and what we use.”44  Additionally, information that other governments may possess, such as satellite imagery, still needed to be sought.  The officials expressed optimism that the newly created Regime Crimes Liaison Office (RCLO – see below) would begin making real progress on the preparation of documentary and other evidence for trials before the Iraqi Special Tribunal.  By mid-June 2004, the document processing site in Baghdad had been set up and a consultant hired by the RCLO to identify various software packages that could be used for the scanning, indexing and case tracking of documents.  The labeling of key documents had also begun, and RCLO officials were hopeful that the processing of state documents would begin in earnest by mid-July. 

Human Rights Watch understood that the RCLO planned to carry out pre-screening of documents before taking them in its custody, but at that point no language assistants had been hired for either the pre-screening or screening stages.  In late July 2004, RCLO Adviser Greg Kehoe told Human Rights Watch that the document scanning process had begun, with a team of some fifteen persons going through the many documents on a daily basis.  The “biggest challenge,” he said, remained that of identifying which entities possessed state archives. He said that efforts were being made to meet with the various groups with archives in their possession in an effort to have the documents placed under one roof.45

             



[2] See Human Rights Watch/Middle East, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against The Kurds, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1995.  This book was first published in slightly different form by Human Rights Watch in July 1993.  The eighteen metric tons of documents, estimated at some four million pages, were largely those captured by the PUK and the KDP which, in May 1992 and August 1993 respectively, agreed to hand them over under a tripartite arrangement with Human Rights Watch/Middle East and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Under the terms of the agreement, the Foreign Relations Committee made the documents official records of the U.S. Congress and stored them in facilities of the U.S. National Archives.  Human Rights Watch/Middle East’s role was to lead the research of the documents for human rights purposes and to prepare the case of genocide against Iraq before the International Court of Justice.

[3] Human Rights Watch interview with Latif Sattar Mustafa, al-Bayda’ Secondary School for Girls, Kirkuk, April 13, 2003.  In another classroom at the school, Human Rights Watch also found stacks of boxes of ammunition, including 40mm Katyusha rockets, 82mm and 100mm mortar shells and 12mm machine gun bullets.  Mustafa said the ammunition had been brought by the Iraqi military at the same time as the documents.  One soldier was stationed in the classroom to guard the ammunition, while other soldiers and officers set up base at an adjoining school, al-Jamahir Primary School for Boys.  Students in both schools were obliged to attend their classes under these conditions.  In the absence of significant numbers of coalition forces in Kirkuk on April 13, Human Rights Watch reported the location of both the documents and the ammunition to officials of the PUK, whose forces were at the time in control of the city.  The then PUK Interior Minister and representative in Kirkuk, Feridun ‘Abdul-Qader, told Human Rights Watch that despite their overstretched resources, he would ensure that guards would be sent to the school.  The organization did not have the opportunity to verify whether this was in fact done.

[4] See Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Protect Government Archives from Looting” (press release), April 10, 2003, and letters dated April 9, 2003, addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

[5] See Human Rights Watch, Basra: Crime and Insecurity Under British Occupation, Vol. 15, No. 6 (E), June 2003, p.8.

[6] See Human Rights Watch, Iraq: Forced Expulsion of Ethnic Minorities, Vol. 15, No. 3 (E), March 2003.

[7] According to the Iraq Memory Foundation’s estimate, the ISG possesses some 30-50 million pages of Iraqi state documents recovered since the 2003 war.

[8] Human Rights Watch discussion with U.S. Justice Department officials, Washington, D.C., March 26, 2004.

[9] Human Rights Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, p. 4.

[10] Human Rights Watch discussion with KDP leader Mas’ud Barzani, Salahuddin, Arbil Governorate, June 28, 2003.

[11] Human Rights Watch discussion with ‘Abd al-Karim al-‘Inzi, Political Bureau member, Islamic Da’wa Party, Baghdad, March 18, 2004.

[12] Human Rights Watch discussion with Najat Ibrahim Hassan, Fadhil Jabbar and Hamid Karkosh, members of the ICP’s Martyrs and Missing Persons Commission, Baghdad, March 24, 2004. On relations between the Ba`th Party government and the ICP, see Middle East Watch [Human Rights Watch/Middle East], Human Rights in Iraq (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), and Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).

[13] Human Rights Watch discussion with ‘Umar Fattah, former head of PUK’s intelligence apparatus, Qala Cholan, Sulaimaniyya governorate, February 17, 2004.

[14] The Association of Free Prisoners comprises a group of former political detainees, Shi’a Muslims in the main, who announced their establishment as an NGO on April 11, 2004, the day after Baghdad fell to coalition forces.  According to its founders, the decision for establishing the AFP and laying down their plan of action, including for the seizure of Iraqi state documents, was taken soon after the war against Iraq became imminent.  In July 2003, the AFP said it had eighteen branches across Iraq, covering each of the country’s governorates, together with some seventy-five members (Human Rights Watch interview with Ibrahim Ra’uf al-Idrisi, head of the Association of Free Prisoners, Baghdad, July 28, 2003). 

[15] Human Rights Watch interview with Fattah al-Idrisi, co-founder, Association of Free Prisoners, Baghdad, February 24, 2004.

[16] In July 2003, the AFP had a group of some thirty volunteers working shifts to extract the lists of executed persons from the stack of documents in their possession.

[17] Human Rights Watch interview with Ibrahim Ra’uf al-Idrisi, July 28, 2003.  The period over which these executions were said to have taken place was unclear, but is presumed to cover the 1980s and 1990s.

[18] According to the CPA team responsible for outreach work with local NGOs, there were some eight groups other than the AFP claiming to have varying amounts of original state archives in their possession.  The majority are Baghdad-based: the Iraqi Human Rights Association; the Union of Political Prisoners; the Association for Victims of Saddam’s Regime; the League of Iraqi Political Prisoners; the Independent Political Prisoners’ Association; Karbala’ Human Rights Watch (not related to the international organization Human Rights Watch, the publisher of this report); the Iraqi Institute of Human Rights (Kirkuk-based); and the Iraqi Prisoners of War Association (Ba’quba-based) (Human Rights Watch discussion with Ester Luferova and Dustin Langan, CPA headquarters, Baghdad, January 12, 2004).

[19] Human Rights Watch discussion with Hamid Faraj Hafez, head of the League of Iraqi Political Prisoners, Baghdad, February 11, 2004.  The League was established on April 30, 2003, and like the AFP, comprises a group of former political prisoners.  At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit, the main activities of the group centered around giving humanitarian and other assistance to Iraqi families who could establish that their relatives had been executed by the former Iraqi government.

[20] The Iraq Memory Foundation has its origins in the Iraq Research and Documentation Project (IRDP), initially based at Harvard’s Center of Middle Eastern Studies and, since 1999, at the Iraq Foundation in Washington, D.C.  IRDP staff acquired considerable experience and expertise though their work on two major sets of Iraqi state documents: 1) the Northern Iraq Data Set, comprising some 2.4 million pages of official documents seized by Kurds during the 1991 uprising primarily from locations in the three governorates of Arbil. Duhok and Sulaimaniyya.  The documents pertain to former security, intelligence, military, Ba`th Party and other state agencies, covering the activities of these agencies during the 1980s decade; and 2) the Kuwait Data Set, comprising some 800,000 pages of official documents pertaining to Iraq’s 1990-1991 occupation of Kuwait and the activities of its various political and military agencies during that period.  According to IRDP, it is “undertaking a detailed processing of the [documents] aimed at categorizing and organizing the wealth of materials available, making them better accessible for academic researchers and others.”  The database “can be searched for keywords, personal names, and place names as they appear of screening sheets generated during the initial survey of documents.”  The IRDP data collection also includes maps, photographs and audio and video materials.  Much of this material is available on IRDP’s website (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~irdp,).

[21] In one case, Western journalists gave Human Rights Watch researchers in Baghdad a stack of original documents which they said they had removed from a government building in the city, prior to their departure from Iraq in June 2003.

[22] One ICP representative told Human Rights Watch that in the early days after the fall of the former government, his party had paid some 500,000 Iraqi dinars  (about U.S.$350 at the time) for certain files containing information about the execution of ICP members, and that as of late March 2004 the ICP was still being approached by individuals offering documents for sale.

[23] Human Rights Watch discussion with Hassan Mneimneh, Documentation Director, Iraq Memory Foundation, Baghdad, February 11, 2004.

[24] Other types of “sales” were also reported, some allegedly involving NGOs.  In January 2004, an Iraqi official told Human Rights Watch that in an effort to trace information about the case of a missing person raised with him by family members, he approached the Association of Free Prisoners to carry out a search through their collection of documents.  The required information was apparently found, for which the official said he was asked to pay $1,000.  When asked about this by Human Rights Watch, the AFP denied they had been involved in such transactions.  In other cases, apparently original documents produced by relatives of missing or executed persons were purchased by political parties, in exchange for which they were issued with identity cards declaring them “relatives of martyrs” – with the promise of having their cases “followed up” and perhaps qualifying for material assistance.  ICP representatives told Human Rights Watch in March 2004 that they had been involved in such cases.

[25] Human Rights Watch discussion with Hassan Mneimneh, February 11, 2004.

[26] Human Rights Watch discussion with Hamid Faraj Hafez, director of the League of Iraqi Political Prisoners, Baghdad, February 11, 2004.

[27] Human Rights Watch discussion with Saber ‘Abdullah Karim, Documents Supervisor, Human Rights Ministry, Sulaimaniyya, February 16, 2004.  Karim told Human Rights Watch that documents in PUK custody pertaining to Arabization had been seized in Kirkuk, including from the crucial Census Department (Da’irat al-Nufus) and the Housing Department (Da’irat al-Iskan).  He said he was totally confident as to their authenticity because they had been taken into PUK custody immediately after the fall of Kirkuk on April 10, 2003, by PUK police brought in from Sulaimaniyya for this purpose.  His account was consistent with what Human Rights Watch had already been told ten months earlier upon visiting the Census Department on April 12, 2003, to find out what had happened to the archives being kept there.  Department employees had said that PUK personnel had already been there and had removed all post-1957 files relating to Sulaimaniyya governorate.

[28] Human Rights Watch discussion with Salah Rashid, Minister of Human Rights, IDPs and the Anfal, Sulaimaniyya, January 22, 2004.

[29] Human Rights Watch discussion with Kan’an Makiya and Hassan Mneimneh, Iraq Memory Foundation, Baghdad, February 11, 2004.

[30] By contrast, the CPA did support groups like the Association of Free Prisoners through funding (via USAID) for the purchase of computer equipment and furnishings for their premises. 

[31] The Iraq Memory Foundation, “A Call for a Centralized Approach in the Collection and Classification of Iraqi Official Documents”, August 7, 2003.

[32] Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 82: Iraqi National Foundation for Remembrance, signed into force by Paul Bremer on April 28, 2004.  Section 1 of Order No. 82 states the purpose of the Foundation is to take steps “to ensure that the atrocities of the previous regime are memorialized so that current and future generations of Iraqis will understand and remember this dark period of Iraqi history and take those steps necessary to preserve an open and democratic government which protects human rights, fundamental freedoms and dignity.”  The Foundation is tasked with seeking and considering proposals for appropriate memorials, in addition to raising funds for the creation of a national memorial museum in Baghdad which “will document, study and present publicly the history of atrocities suffered under the previous regime” (Section 2(4)).  A sum of U.S. $ 10 million was reportedly allocated by the CPA for the establishment of the Remembrance Foundation.

[33] Human Rights Watch discussion with Sandy Hodgkinson, CPA, Baghdad, mid-July 2003.

[34] The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), headquartered in Sarajevo, is an intergovernmental organization created in 1996 to address the issue of persons missing as a result of the conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro in the period 1991-1995.  It subsequently expanded its operations to include cases of persons missing during the 1999 conflict in Kosovo and the conflict in Macedonia in 2001.  The ICMP “endeavors to secure the cooperation of Governments and other authorities in locating and identifying persons missing as a result of armed conflict, other hostilities or violations of human rights and to assist them in doing so,” and “maintains contacts with other countries that have large numbers of missing persons”, including Iraq.  The organization’s Forensic Science Department has primary responsibility for “developing, implementing and managing the technical process of assisting governments in exhumations, examinations and identifications of persons missing as a result of violent conflicts,” while its Civil Society Initiatives Department encourages “effective management of family members and other members of civil society, in the representation of their interests and in advocacy activities geared towards achieving more effective resolution of the missing persons’ issue.”  Information about the ICMP’s activities can be found on its website (http://www.ic-mp.org).

[35] Human Rights Watch discussion with Sandy Hodgkinson, CPA, Baghdad, August 14, 2003.

[36]Human Rights Watch discussion with Sandy Hodgkinson, CPA, Baghdad, February 12, 2004.  Hodgkinson said the CPA had discussed with ICRC the question of access to its data on missing persons in Iraq, but that ICRC only kept such data in connection with those missing from the Iran-Iraq conflict and the Kuwait conflict, and had no data on the “internally disappeared”.

[37] Ibid. In addition to official state documents seized during the 1991 uprising, the CPA told Human Rights Watch it had also received documents and other information already gathered by INDICT, a London-based organization formed in 1996 to campaign for the establishment of an ad hoc international criminal tribunal for Iraq, which had agreed to hand over files and evidence it had collected. The CPA said that similar arrangements were being made with British parliamentarian Baroness Emma Nicholson regarding information gathered on Iraq’s southern marshes region through the organization which she founded, the Amar Appeal.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Human Rights Watch discussion with Philip Trewhitt, formerly U.K. Liaison on Transitional Justice, CPA, Baghdad, February 12, 2004.  The CPA held a meeting in mid-February 2004 with representatives of NGOs and political parties for this purpose, aimed at agreeing on a set of recommendations that would be presented to the IGC for consideration.  Human Rights Watch was later told by some of those who participated that the meeting failed to result in such agreement.  Trewhitt said that the CPA had been trying since August 2003 to secure agreement with NGOs and political parties on the documents but had received little cooperation.  Such attempts included the hosting of a conference held in November 2003 under CPA auspices to discuss the documents but, according to Trewhitt, “political parties never showed and the NGOs came and gave their comments and left”.

[41] On November 6, 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law H.R. 3289, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense and for the Reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, 2004.  Totaling $87 billion, the amount earmarked for Iraq’s reconstruction was set at $20.3 billion, of which $300 million was requested for “Rule of Law” efforts, elections, and government operations. 

[42] Human Rights Watch discussion with Karen Hanrahan, USAID, Baghdad, February 4, 2004.

[43] Human Rights Watch discussion with Peter Boyles, CPA, Baghdad, February 12, 2004.  On the processing of documents, Boyles said that lessons had been learned from the ICTY experience, where state documents had been scanned wholesale without prioritization: “At the beginning ICTY used to scan 25,000 pages a month.  Now ICTY scans 75,000 pages a month, but still that means that not more than 60-70% of documents have been indexed until now”. 

[44] Human Rights Watch discussion with Department of Justice officials, Washington, D.C., March 26, 2004.

[45] Human Rights Watch discussion with Greg Kehoe, RCLO Adviser, Baghdad, July 22, 2004.


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