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Detention and Disappearance

Although they saw nothing, the villagers taken behind the hill near the schoolhouse heard shots and knew what they meant. Soldiers and militiamen forcibly prevented them from running back to their men, who by now were receiving the coup de grace. Men and women "both wept," said one widow, "and the children screamed for their fathers."

The surviving villagers were mostly women, children and elderly, numbering between 150 and 300. Although they were hungry and thirsty after their long excursion through the mountains, the soldiers hustled them down the hill on foot from Koreme to the district capital of Mengish. Mengish, a town of a few thousand, with electricity, running water, and some paved roads, also had, like all provincial towns, a military fortress, to which the Koreme survivors were taken. It was filled to bursting with thousands of other Kurdish villagers; some Koreme villagers reported having been held in the Mengish school.

Mengish Fort

Mengish fort, a cement and stone building, contained a warren of dark cells and some interior courtyards. Jammed with captured Kurds, it offered appalling sanitation, food and water. Most villagers reported that they received no food whatsoever during the two to four days they were there; a few reported receiving one or two pieces of Kurdish flat bread. One man reported being kept in solitary confinement in a classroom of Mengish school for two days without food or water, although on the second day someone outside the school threw bread through the window and then ran away.

Water, too, was not generally distributed. Many people went without any for several days. Others received a little bit when some barrels of hot, sun-heated water were placed in the courtyard. It was not enough to go around, and in any case, since most people had nothing to carry it with, they went with very little or without.

Dohuk Fort

After a few days in the Mengish fort, the Koreme villagers were gradually moved in small groups to the enormous fortress at the provincial capital of Dohuk, a journey of about one hour.

The young and adult men were transported separately from their wives and other family members. Aba, one of the men who survived execution at Koreme, was one of those transported to Dohuk fort, although with his wounded leg disinfected but not set, he could hardly walk. But, he said, "I had no fever, so I knew I wouldn't get gangrene and I knew I would live, if they didn't kill me."

At Dohuk fort, according to Koreme villagers, conditions were scarcely better than at Mengish, even though many villagers remained at Dohuk for several weeks. Some food and water was distributed, but it rarely amounted to more than a piece of bread every other day, handed out negligently. Water supplies remained limited to a few barrels of hot water placed in courtyards that were unsanitary and insufficient to meet drinking needs.

Some pregnant women were said to have miscarried, a result physicians confirmed was unsurprising in the circumstances, given the women's stress, declining nutrition and, particularly, dehydration. There was no report of any medical care; one woman who asked for a doctor was told by a soldier that "the Kurds have been brought here to die." MEW/PHR received testimony of similar remarks made by Iraqi soldiers to detained Kurds on many occasions.

A woman was reported by women of Koreme to have died in premature labor in the fort; her husband, they said, was not with her.

Children suffered especially. Some reportedly died in the fort, while others appear to have been so weakened that, in combination with the subsequent adverse conditions of the camps at Jeznikam and Beharke, near Erbil, to which they were subsequently transferred, they rapidly succumbed. Nursing mothers, too, faced special difficulties. One boy, who had been pushed out of the execution line at Koreme by a lieutenant, said that when "we reached Dohuk fort, my mother's milk dried up." The infant sister that his mother was nursing eventually died in Beharke camp.

There are virtually no differences in the accounts given to MEW/PHR of Mengish and Dohuk with respect to these essentials of food, water, and sanitation, not only by Koreme villagers, but also by people from other villages imprisoned there. Moreover, the accounts are consistent with the treatment of Kurdish villagers captured and detained in other forts at the time of the Anfal campaign in the region of northern Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Disappearances

While in custody in Dohuk, approximately twenty-six young and adult Koreme men disappeared at the hands of Iraqi security agents and soldiers.

According to family members who were also held captive in Dohuk fort, the disappearances took place in two separate sweeps. Young and adult men were generally held separately from their families in the fort, although some were allowed to mingle on occasion. Some of the men and teenage boys "were beaten up by the guards. I don't know why," said the mother of a disappeared young man. Other Koreme villagers reported more serious physical abuse, including systematic beatings of men who were hung by wires.

The first sweep of which Koreme villagers were aware took place on the second day after most villagers had been moved from Mengish to Dohuk (other sweeps, resulting in other disappearances, were reported by others imprisoned in Dohuk fort). Guards circulated among the captives; they did not ask for identity cards or documents, nor did they work from any apparent list. Rather, they seemed simply to be judging men and boys by their age. According to surviving family members, if a man looked "too young" or a boy "too old," then he was taken away. The wife of a Koreme man who disappeared in this first sweep said he was taken away "because he was a man and not a child." Some of the boys who were taken had not been initially classed with the young and adult men, and were taken from their mothers. Many of those taken were teenagers.

All of the Koreme men who disappeared were taken away in the first sweep. A few others survived, in some cases perhaps because they were boys who looked very young for their age, and in some cases perhaps because they looked older than they were. The wounded survivor of the Koreme execution, Aba, was not taken. However, a day or so later, a second sweep was conducted, carrying away still more men and boys from other villages. By the conclusion of the sweeps, there were virtually no young adult men left among the captives in Dohuk.

The victims were loaded onto army trucks which left Dohuk fort. None of the Koreme men and boys who were taken away has ever been seen again.

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