IV. Discovery of the Mass Graves at al-Mahawil

For twelve years the fate and whereabouts of those who “disappeared” in custody in 1991 remained unresolved. Witnesses to the killings inside Iraq were afraid to speak out, and human rights investigators were barred from Iraq. Families of the “disappeared” also were too afraid to search for their relatives. When they did ask questions, Iraqi officials told them that their relatives remained alive in detention or simply refused to provide information.

That all changed with the collapse of the Iraqi government in early April 2003. Almost immediately, across Iraq, people began to locate mass graves. The first mass grave near al-Hilla in the village of Imam Bakr was discovered on May 2, 2003, and contained the remains of between forty and fifty victims of the 1991 crackdown.

Two much larger mass graves were discovered around May 13 near the village of al-Mahawil, the site of a major Iraqi military base where many of those arrested in 1991 had been detained. The first site, located in the clay pits behind an abandoned brick factory on the main Baghdad- al-Hilla highway, contained the bodies of some six hundred victims, according to local (municipal and religious) officials⁷. A second site, located just a few kilometers north in an open field in an agricultural area, contained the bodies of at least two thousand people, according to local officials.