At first, the scene seemed like a familiar one from Baghdad in April 2003; an enormous ruined government building in grand grounds, windows smashed in, all looted out, documents scattered over the flowerbeds. Knots of impatient young Iraqi men in cheap T-shirts and sandals, kept at bay from a further assault on the building by the muzzles of US tanks.
This one was different. The looters were not all looters, and the US tanks hadn’t just come to chase them away, but to help them. The waiting Iraqis and the soldiers were looking for the same thing. They were looking for ghosts.
Those who have lost what they loved the most are always the richest in hope. Many of those waiting and craning their necks at the US army’s go-no-further line had been hoarding hope for decades, hope that deep underground that hated, terrifying building, the headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s military intelligence department, lay a secret warren of cells in which their missing relatives had been kept for more than two decades.
Now Saddam was gone, and the hopers had brought their hoarded hope out into the sunlight, and were spending it in this moment, when the Americans would dig down deep under the building and find the cells, and their children and brothers and cousins would crawl out into the light, tortured, robbed of years, but alive.
Troops from the US army’s taskforce 2-69 had entered the building and, after realising that the desperate Iraqis chipping and digging into the very floor were no ordinary looters, listened to their story.
They searched the building for secret entrances to secret basements, and found none. They took ex-prisoners in, hoping to be shown the way down to the cells, but the prisoners became confused, even though they insisted that the prisoners were there. They noticed that the lifts went no lower than the basement. Still the relatives of the disappeared were insistent: you must find them, get them out. So the US soldiers turned to explosives.
”We use C4 [a type of explosive], and that’s going to get us underneath the surface, and that way we can find a way through to the prisoners,” said Lieutenant Chris McGrail. ”Most of the civilians have said there are people trapped under there, so we are trying to get in.
”We’ve had indications, based on what members of the public have said, that there are underground compartments where people are kept. A lot of prisoners have been tortured here.”
Some of the Iraqi hopers claimed to have heard prisoners talking under the building. One US officer said he understood there were between 40 and 4 000 people in the cells, left to die by their captors when they fled.
The commander of the unit, Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Sanderson, was sympathetic, but sceptical. ”We’ve searched the building, and so far we’ve found absolutely nothing, but just to make ourselves feel on-message we’re putting shaped charges on the floor of the basement to tell us if there’s another floor below.
”These people are free and they want to find all of their kinsmen tortured during these years. But I do not want to hold out any false hope … I don’t think there’s anything underneath this. I would be shocked and amazed if I find something.”
Outside, beyond the no-go line, the Iraqis pressed round in a jostling scrum to tell their stories of hope. ”I’m searching in there for my uncle. He’s been missing for 23 years. I think he was here because it was the central intelligence building in Iraq and all the prisoners are inside,” said one.
”My brother-in-law disappeared 23 years ago!” shouted Mundr Nasr, a dentist. ”This is the crime of Saddam Hussein.”
An elderly man, Mohamed Ali, said his family had fallen victim to a vicious series of arrests and disappearances after an assassination attempt on Saddam in Dijail. Three of his sons and six of his sister’s sons had been taken 21 years ago and had not been seen since.
As he told the story for a third and a fourth time, in the heat of the afternoon, struggling to put the English words together but dignified and still in the shouting, confirming crowd, tears welled up behind his glasses and he put his fingers up to wipe them away.
In the basement of the building the charge went off with a muffled thud and Lt Col Sanderson led the way down through the smoke and the dust to the small basement room where those who had come with hope had been listening and digging. The explosives had gouged a deep tear in the floor. At the bottom there was only dirt.
”I’m afraid this was an urban legend,” the American officer said sadly as he turned away.
Outside, the hopers had too much hope just to lose it all. Iraq has many prisons. ”There are other prisons, but nobody knows where exactly they all are,” said Abu Mohamed. ”There are no normal stories about prisoners here.” – Guardian Unlimited Â