IAPE Evidence Blog

Colum­bia Daily Tri­bune (Mis­souri), SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A.2
BYLINE: MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Bagh­dad, Iraq

Museum plans to open in 2011.

BAGHDAD — Deep inside the walled-off Green Zone, in an air-conditioned room watched by around-the-clock secu­rity, is a par­tic­u­larly grisly col­lec­tion of Iraqi mem­o­ra­bilia: leg irons, bone frag­ments, a hangman’s noose and pho­tographs of skele­tons unearthed from mass graves, some still wear­ing their clothes.

They are relics of the most bru­tal peri­ods of the Sad­dam Hus­sein era, col­lected by inves­ti­ga­tors as evi­dence in the ex-dictator’s trial for crimes against human­ity. He was exe­cuted Dec. 30, 2006. 

The Iraqi court offi­cial who holds the only key to the evi­dence room says it will open to the pub­lic as a museum some­time in 2011. It would mark an extra­or­di­nary addi­tion to the his­tor­i­cal record of this wob­bly young democ­racy, whose new lead­ers so far have been eager to scrub out nearly all signs of Saddam’s three decades in power.

“This is a very long period of our his­tory,” said the court offi­cial, Sat­tar Jab­bar. “Other gen­er­a­tions have to know what the old regime did and what crimes were com­mit­ted in Iraq.”

The facil­ity housed at the Iraqi High Tri­bunal, the spe­cial court set up to try Sad­dam and other mem­bers of his regime for atroc­i­ties, has not been named, but Jab­bar has a sug­ges­tion: the Sad­dam Crim­i­nal Museum. That alone would be unique. Four years after his death, even Saddam’s name, which had been affixed to mosques, neigh­bor­hoods and pub­lic build­ings, has prac­ti­cally van­ished from Iraq.

The his­tory text­books in Iraq’s pub­lic schools now abrupt­lyin 1958, mak­ing no men­tion of the 1963 and 1968 rev­o­lu­tions that pro­pelled Saddam’s Arab nation­al­ist Ba’ath Party to power. In fact, teach­ers say, “Sad­dam” and “Ba’ath” aren’t men­tioned once.

The evi­dence room, how­ever, is lined with row upon row of offi­cial doc­u­ments bear­ing Saddam’s name and sig­na­ture, always in pre­cise red ink. One of the doc­u­ments, a guide explained, is a let­ter from Sad­dam con­grat­u­lat­ing sol­diers who car­ried out a 1982 mas­sacre in the mostly Shi­ite north­ern town of Dujail, killing nearly 150 men and boys. It was that inci­dent for which the tri­bunal sen­tenced Sad­dam to death in 2006.

There’s no place in today’s Iraq that deals so frankly with this period. Much like Ger­many after Hitler and the Soviet Union after Stalin, experts say, Iraq’s polit­i­cal elites are still fight­ing over how — or if — to remem­ber Saddam.

“All of this is an effort to rewrite Iraqi his­tory, and one way is to agree on a sort of his­tor­i­cal amne­sia,” said Eric Davis, an Iraq expert at Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity. “This is the prob­lem you have in any post-authoritarian society.”

In recent years, the Shiite-led gov­ern­ment tried to stamp out all reminders of the sec­u­lar, Sunni-dominated Sad­dam era. It banned for­mer Ba’ath Party mem­bers from run­ning in the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, enrag­ing the Sunni minor­ity. In Feb­ru­ary, demo­li­tion crews took jack­ham­mers to a 73-foot lime­stone statue called “The Union,” shaped like two clasped hands, which Sad­dam built after the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War.
“The peo­ple in power now came with revenge in their hearts,” said Qasim Sabti, a promi­nent artist in Baghdad.

Much of the evi­dence on dis­play was pre­sented dur­ing Saddam’s trial, but offi­cials say the museum also will house an archive con­tain­ing more than 20 mil­lion doc­u­ments, includ­ing hand­writ­ten orders from Sad­dam and his lieutenants.

When he was a fix­ture in their lives, Iraqis never had such a close look at him. When the museum opens, how­ever, they can see the items that U.S. sol­diers con­fis­cated from Sad­dam when they cap­tured him hid­ing in a fox­hole in Decem­ber 2003, includ­ing dirty blue socks, a stained black-and-white kaf­fiyeh (a tra­di­tional Arab head scarf worn by men), 88 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, forged iden­tity papers, a can opener, tooth­picks and a bar of Pal­mo­live soap.

For now, the only peo­ple allowed to glimpse such sou­venirs are high-ranking Iraqi offi­cials, diplo­mats and other VIPs. The tri­bunal still has sev­eral tri­als pend­ing, Jab­bar said, and open­ing the museum now would be too sensitive.

There’s a more prac­ti­cal prob­lem. The tri­bunal is inside the for­ti­fied Green Zone, and access is heav­ily con­trolled by the Iraqi mil­i­tary. Nearly eight years after U.S.-led forces top­pled Sad­dam, the seat of the new Iraqi democ­racy is still off-limits to the vast major­ity of its people.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
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