ID clues rare in mass graves in Iraq

By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 14, 5:03 PM ET

BAGHDAD - The red-and-white identification card was faded. But the name was legible and the picture of the man with the necktie and tidy mustache was clear.

Rashid Aboud Awad, who worked in a medicine storage facility in Ramadi, was last seen alive by his wife and children when he went off swimming in nearby Lake Tharthar, once Saddam Hussein's favorite fishing spot and more recently part of an al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold west of Baghdad.

Awad's remains were discovered last week in a mass grave along with more than 20 other bodies near the manmade lake surrounded by rugged and sun-bleached scrubland.

More than 150 bodies have been unearthed in recent months from mass graves around Lake Tharthar. It's seen as the grisly legacy of al-Qaida control of Iraq's western deserts until being ousted early this year in an uprising by local tribes. The revolt was spurred — at least in part — by their claims of extremist brutalities.

Each mass grave uncovered around Tharthar and elsewhere in Iraq — so far at least 12 burial sites — appears to offer more evidence of the fate of Iraqis who challenged al-Qaida and its backers.

Al-Qaida is not alone in being accused of atrocities following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Shiite death squads and others have taken thousands of lives in Iraq's sectarian meltdown.

But the mass graves now turning up in former al-Qaida territory help explain the decision by Sunni tribal leaders to fight back. U.S. and Iraqi commanders say the groundswell helped drive al-Qaida from the belts around Baghdad and forced extremists to hunt for new havens in northern Iraq.

Awad's Health Ministry ID card, which expired April 1, was a rare solid lead to confirm the name of a body found in a mass grave.

His relatives recognized pieces of his clothing, a hospital official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. It was unclear when Awad died, but experts said it appeared to be less than a year ago — suggesting he was killed early in 2007.

Of the 23 sets of remains in the grave, authorities were able to identify only Awad and two others. That's typical in Iraq, where officials usually lack such forensics aids as DNA and dental records.

In the vast majority of missing person cases in Iraq, families are left guessing forever about what happened.

Whenever she hears that a mass grave has been found, Madiha al-Ani, a 75-year-old resident of Fallujah, dispatches relatives to the hospital to search for signs of her son who vanished en route home from Baghdad in February 2006. She always hopes they will come back empty-handed so she can maintain the belief that he's alive.

"I am an old woman and Ali was my only son. I have the feeling that someday he will return to his mother," she said.

Sajad Majid, a 16-year-old who lives south of Baghdad near Youssifiyah, said his uncle disappeared more than two years ago while returning home from his barber shop. Five months later, Majid's father went to investigate a report that a mass grave in nearby Radwaniyah could contain his uncle's remains — only to be kidnapped himself.

"I have not seen them since," the teenager said. "We have lost any hope of finding them alive. The only thing we can hope for is to bury the bodies."

Iraqi security forces have taken advantage of recent security gains to step up patrols in areas previously considered no-go zones, leading to the discovery of bodies near Lake Tharthar as well as in the volatile Diyala province and the Baghdad neighborhoods of Dora and Fadhl.

The mass grave found Dec. 2 near Lake Tharthar was one of 12 unearthed since May containing the remains of at least 287 people, according to an Associated Press tally based on police and U.S. military reports.

Six of the graves containing the remains of more than half of the victims, 157, were found in the vicinity of Lake Tharthar, the AP tally showed.

"Fishermen and farmers have started to inform the police about bodies, then the police transfer them to the Fallujah General Hospital," the hospital official said.

Sixteen corpses — 12 decapitated and four shot in the head — were found Wednesday by Iraqi soldiers investigating a foul smell while on patrol in a lush grove of date palms and fruit trees near the Diyala province city of Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the Iraqi army said.

Still, the numbers of bodies found are a fraction of the estimated 375,000 Iraqis who have vanished as a result of checkpoint kidnappings and other violence by Sunni and Shiite extremists.

And even when bodies are found, most are in an advanced state of decomposition.

An official at the Muqdadiyah morgue, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals, said the facility has no modern technology to identify the remains found Wednesday. He said the bodies were decomposed beyond recognition. Instead, authorities take pictures of each body and assign it a serial number in case relatives come forward.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is providing training and equipment for body identification, but it's a slow process.

Dr. Maximo Duque, a forensics adviser for the ICRC, said the daily hazards and inconveniences of life in Iraq complicate the training. "It is not easy," he said by telephone from Amman, Jordan. "We can help in providing the material but sometimes they don't have the electricity."

Regional hospitals often lack X-ray machines and dental records, which are commonly used for identification in developed countries. The country has only one DNA testing facility, in Baghdad.

"Many bodies found are in an advanced stage of decomposition and sometimes we have only bones," said Adel Muhsin, the Health Ministry's inspector general. "Another problem is that we do not have DNA records, so even if we do the DNA testing, there is nothing to match it with."

Muhsin expressed hope authorities could take advantage of a relative lull in violence to make progress.

"In the past, we were busy with the bodies from the explosions and violence and we did not have the time to use this technology in order to identify the bodies in the morgue. Now, we have a little freedom to do so," he said.

In the meantime, most health care workers rely on rudimentary detective work. They take pictures for relatives and friends to examine and pick through bags of rotting clothes and human remains for recognizable items.

At the grave near Lake Tharthar where Awad's remains were found, Iraqi soldiers also discovered the bodies of two beheaded policemen from the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi who also had ID cards.

Awad's family told hospital officials that he didn't have any friends who were policemen; therefore, it was determined that the victims in the mass grave were from different places.

Authorities said most of the dead were probably travelers going to Jordan or Syria.

The remains of the 20 unidentified victims from the grave were photographed and buried in a cemetery near Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Each of their graves was marked only by a number.

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Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and AP researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.