Missing Before May 1, 2003
Iraqi Families Looking for their Sons in the American Secret Prisons
E.A.Khamas, BRussells Tribunal
May 10,2005
One of the major problems that the Iraqi families are going through after two years of occupation, a problem that is rarely mentioned in the media, if at all, is the case of people who disappeared during the 2003 American invasion, or after that during the occupation, whom the American authorities refuse to give any information about because they are considered dangerous, or those who are called security inmates in the American controlled prisons.
All the national and international NGOs who work(ed) in Iraq are very familiar with a reply that they always get from the American military bases or information centers, when they ask about a detainee who was arrested or disappeared in the period March 20-May 1st, 2003:
"No information about whoever was arrested before May 1st 2003", no compensations, no complains heard, nothing. On May 1st 2003, President Bush announced the end of the military operations in Iraq. It is also impossible to know any thing about those who are called security inmates, because they are the responsibility of the American Army (according to Chuck Ryan, the American officer who was responsible of the Iraq prisons late in 2003)
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Talking to these families is diving in a sea of tears of the mothers, wives, and children. "We just want to know. They (the American) can keep our sons as long as they want, but just tell us if they are alive, and where they are" a sentence you hear from almost every body who is looking for a missing loved one.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m11648