◆ SpookStack

1631 -HQ-1462938 so many bodies underneath me. I lay down on top of them. They started to shoot on us. There were two [groups of] men. One was taking the people off the bus, and others were shooting at people in the hole. One of them pulled at my clothes and said, “That one isn’t dead, shoot him.” They shot again, but still I was not shot. So they gave an order to the bulldozer driver to bury the grave. I was at the edge of the grave. When the shovel came, I Spontaneously tried to crawl out. It was sundown now. I crawled to the edge of the grave, and got to a place where the bamboo was on my face and I was able to breathe through it. I heard the man who was standing on the hill instruct the shovel driver to bury us more—he had seen that I was not yet buried—but the driver left the place and didn’t do it. After he heard the noises of the vehicles fade away, DO crawled out of the mass grave, leaving his dead relatives behind. He made his way to the main Al-Hillah-Baghdad road, and met four sympathetic Shiva Iraqi soldiers who helped him return home. Witnesses to the Al-Mahawil Arrests and Detentions eS eeee tO the Ai-Manawil Arrests and Detentions There are many others in the Al-Hillah area who witnessed the mass detentions and executions. Their testimonies provide further evidence of the mass detentions at Al-Mahawil military base and the subsequent executions of thousands. ISKANDAR JAWAD WITWIT, the newly-appointed Mayor, was a high- ranking Air Force officer based at Al-Mahawil at the time. He said that the Iraqi government crushed the uprising in Al-Hillah by March 11, 1991, and immediately began a massive arrest campaign throughout the area: wb OD QO They arrested everyone they saw [and took them to Al-Mahawil military base]. If they found men, women, or children, they took them. People were brought from Al-Hillah, An-Najaf, and Karbala for execution. The executions happened every day; they killed thousands of people. [HRW interview with ISKANDAR JAWAD WITWIT, Hillah, May 17, 2003] 88