'I will always hate you people'

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1223358,00.html

Baghdad

'I will always hate you people'

Family's fury at mystery death
Luke Harding in Baghdad
Monday May 24, 2004

The Guardian
The first Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly's family knew of his
death was when his battered corpse turned up at Baghdad's
morgue. Attached to the zipped-up black US body bag was a
laconic note.

The US military claimed in the note that Dr Izmerly, a
distinguished chemistry professor arrested after US tanks
encircled his villa, had died of "brainstem compression".

Dr Izmerly's sudden death after 10 months in American
custody left his family stunned, not least because three
weeks earlier they had visited him in the US prison at
Baghdad airport. His 23-year-old daughter, Rana, recalled
that he had seemed in "good health".

The family commissioned an independent Iraqi autopsy. Its
conclusion was unambiguous: Dr Izmerly had died because of a
"sudden hit to the back of his head", Faik Amin Baker, the
director of Baghdad hospital's forensic department, certified.

The cause of death was blunt trauma. It was uncertain
exactly how he died, but someone had hit him from behind,
possibly with a bar or a pistol, Dr Baker confirmed yesterday.

"He died from a massive blow to the head. We don't disagree
with the coalition's report, but it doesn't explain how he
got his injuries in the first place," he told the Guardian.

The apparent murder of a "high-value" detainee, held as part
of the search for weapons of mass destruction, is another
blow for the Bush administration, still reeling from the Abu
Ghraib jail abuse scandal.

Dr Izmerly was on the coalition's original "200 list" of
suspects from Saddam Hussein's regime, and his death
happened just two weeks after the US military began its own
secret inquiry into the prison west of Baghdad. Last Friday
the Pentagon admitted it was now investigating eight more
suspected murders.

Several prisoners have been found to have died before or
during interrogation. They include Major General Abed Hamed
Mowhoush, a former commander of Iraq's air defences, who
died last November during interrogation at Qaim.

The original US autopsy said he had died of a heart attack.
It now appears he was suffocated during interrogation when a
CIA officer put him in a sleeping bag and sat on him.

Last night the family of Dr Izmerly were in little doubt he
had been murdered in US custody. The reasons for his death
were covered up, they believe.

"This was not natural," Rana told the Guardian yesterday, in
the first interview given by the family since his death.
"The evidence is clear. It suggests the Americans killed him
and then tried to hide what they had done. I will hate
Americans and British people for the rest of my life. You
are democrats. You said you were coming to bring democracy,
and yet you kill my father. By accepting your governments,
you accept what they do here in Iraq.

"You offer no proof that he did something wrong, you refuse
him a lawyer and then you kill him. Why?"

Dr Izmerly does not appear to be among the cases under the
review announced by the US defence department last week.

The death certificate provided by the coalition, which is
almost entirely blank, fails to explain how he got a
fracture in his skull, or the small cut above his left eye.
The scientist is merely a number, 1909.

Asked to explain how he had died, a coalition spokesman said
last night: "There are several investigations currently
under way into the issue of detainee abuse. It is
inappropriate for us to comment on ongoing investigations."

The professor's 60-year-old widow, Sahera Abdullah, said she
had received no satisfactory explanation of why he had been
arrested in the first place. His study at his villa in the
Baghdad suburb of al-Khadra had burned down during a
shootout between US soldiers and Saddam's paramilitaries,
the Fedayeen, during last year's war, she said.

Soon afterwards, on April 25, US tanks encircled the house.
Marines kicked in the front door and then ransacked the
home, carting off books, papers, computers and family
photographs. Mrs Izmerly said: "They stayed for a day. I
offered them tea and coffee. They seemed surprised."

The next day Dr Izmerly gave himself up. The family admits
that he had met Saddam the previous year, but says he was
part of a group of academics summoned to meet the president.
The family admits that the price of his going to
international scientific conferences was to pass information
to the mukhabarat, the secret police.

The first Red Cross letter arrived last May, but the family
was still no wiser as to where the US was holding him. After
six months, they were allowed to drop off some winter
clothes at al-Taji, a US military base north of Baghdad.
There were three telephone calls. But their attempts to
visit him got nowhere.

Finally, Rana and her elder sister, Nuha, 27, and brother,
Ashraf, 21, discovered that their father was being kept at
the US base at Baghdad international airport. On January 11,
they managed to see him.

A US officer, known as Mr Jakey, drove them blindfolded on a
zigzagging route through the camp. They were taken to an
empty tourist villa. Her father emerged from a side door.
They gave him some sweets. "When I saw him his health was
good. He was normal. He was dressed in the clothes we sent
him earlier," Rana said. "But he refused to talk about what
had happened to him in custody. I asked the Americans why
they had arrested him. They told me simply, 'He is a witness'."

The Red Cross visited him on January 19. On February 17, the
organisation informed the family that he was dead. "I went
to the morgue in the hospital and found him in a black US
body bag," Ashraf said yesterday. "There was a cut on his
head behind his right ear. It was hard to miss."

It was discovered that US doctors had made a 20cm incision
in his skull, apparently in an attempt to save his life
after the initial blow.

The family presented its autopsy findings to an Iraqi judge.
"He told us, 'You can't do anything to the coalition. What
happened is history,'" Ashraf said.

Yesterday, as darkness fell around the scientist's home, the
family showed some of their father's belongings returned
from the jail - a few Red Cross letters, a bag of clothes
and a framed photo.

But there also was the legacy of emotion - of a kind now
common across Iraq, and swelling into a storm. "I won't
allow myself to rest until I have got revenge for him," Rana
said.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
"

'You can't do anything to the coalition. What happened is
history,'

En 'onze jongens' doen daar aan mee?

Henk Elegeert

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