Iraqis tried by al Sadr for aiding U.S. remain missing

[Rose Siding]

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The 56-year-old Iraqi border policeman's crime was collaborating with the Americans. His judge and jury were henchmen of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, the head of the largest Iraqi-bred insurgency, which had been battling U.S. troops in the center of the city. His sentence, handed down in al Sadr's religious court, would be swift with no appeal.

Khashan was to be tied facedown on a rickety bed frame in the vault. He would then be beaten with a rock-filled section of garden hose until he was dead.

It takes only three blows, Khashan recalled counting, watching his black-clad captors bludgeon one prisoner after another to death with the rubber tube. "I kept thinking, this same thing is going to happen to me," he said recently. "All I could do is pray and ask for God's forgiveness."

Khashan was spared that fate on July 28. A last-minute deal between his commander and al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia prompted his release.

Hundreds weren't so lucky. Police are still counting the number of Iraqis who were dragged before al Sadr's religious courts and executed. As many as 300 victims arrested from April to August in Najaf alone are missing, said Capt. Mohammed Abdul Hussein, the head liaison between the Iraqi Interior Ministry and Najaf authorities investigating the court's activities, who asked that his last name not be used.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9952772.htm