◆ SpookStack

1631 -HQ-1462938 officers, and, possibly IBRAHIM ZANGANA, the governor of Erbil, and a second local Ba’ath Party official, ABD-AL-MON’EM. The Amn officers questioned the hospital guards, demanding to know where the new patients were from and who the doctors were who were treating them. They then repeated these questions to the medical staff, and demanded to know what treatment was being given. As these questions were answered, NADURI telephoned the Amn office for instructions. After hanging up, he ordered that all treatment cease immediately. He told the doctors to remove the dressings from the patients’ wounds. When the doctors asked why, NADURI stated that he had received orders from his superiors to transfer all the patients to the city’s military hospital. At first, the hospital staff demurred, but the three Amn officers drew their pistols and ordered them to stop what they were doing at once. Otherwise, they would be taken to Amn headquarters themselves. After a second telephone call, this time ostensibly to the military hospital, a number of ambulances or trucks arrived and took the patients away, together with those who remained, for a full hour now, in the three parked vans. Later that day, the doctors telephoned the military hospital to check on the condition of their patients. They had never arrived there. The doctors never saw any of the survivors of the Balisan Valley chemical attack again. They later heard that loaded military ambulances had been seen driving off in the direction of Makhmour, to the southwest of Erbil. A handful of survivors told Middle East Watch that the Balisan Valley victims were taken to a former police station that was now an Amn detention center, a stark white cement building in the Arab quarter of the city, near the Baiz casino. There was a chaotic scene on arrival, as Amn officers attempted to sort out detainees by age and sex, and, in the confusion, several people managed to 15