Baghdad, Apr 21: Nearly 1,000 political prisoners lie buried in secret graves at a cemetery on the western outskirts of Baghdad, the cemetery's manager and a gravedigger told a news agency while displaying remains of the corpses. "The Baath regime has gone and now we can talk freely with you," the manager, Mohymeed Aswad, told a news agency. "They are all political. Ten to 15 bodies would arrive at a time from the Abu Ghraib prison and we would bury them here," he said, adding that the last corpse interred was number 993. Mohammad Moshan Mohammad, gravedigger at the cemetery located about 30 kilometers from central Baghdad and about two kilometers from the prison, said much of his work involved political prisoners.
He said all the dead that arrived from the feared prison during the last three years he worked at the cemetery were aged between 15 and 30, men and women who had been shot or hanged.
"The civilians were hanged. Sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot. I could distinguish them by their uniforms," he said through an interpreter.
There are no names at the grave sites which occupy three acres of land and are fenced off by a six-foot high wall. Instead each grave is marked with a number.
"This grave belongs to a woman. She was hanged," Mohamad said, pointing to number 952. Bureau Report