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Al Hayat Badoush massacres: How four inmates evaded death The second part of a harrowing first-hand account detailing the massacre of inmates at Badoush Prison the day Mosul fell to the Islamic State.
ERBIL - All the way from the site of the first massacre in Wadi Badoush to Mosul — as the three trucks transported the Sunni prisoners along with dozens of Shiites hiding their identity — he raised his voice with the others, shouting out the infamous slogan of the Islamic State (ISIS): “The Islamic State… is here to stay.” Massoud Waadallah thought that the ISIS members had fallen for the trick and would release him as soon as they arrived in the city, but fear soon gripped him when the three trucks passed close to the Bawabat al-Sham gate. There, the militants were leading a large crowd of prisoners towards the area next to the gate where Waadallah felt sure they would be executed, just like the prisoners at Wadi Badoush. Ayn al-Jahesh massacre: prisoner number 157 Waadallah, who survived to tell the tale of the massacre, remembers that after passing through Bawabat al-Sham the trucks drove into West Mosul’s industrial area, and then passed through the city’s al-Tanak neighborhood. From there they entered the Al-Sahaji area after which they moved onto the outer road that leads to southwest Mosul. After an almost two hours’ drive on the desert road, the trucks reached the area around the town of Ayn al-Jahesh. There, near the town’s stone quarry, the trucks stopped and the prisoners got out to find dozens of ISIS members waiting for them. Waadallah says the ISIS fighters arranged the prisoners systematically in lines of ten and then began to give them consecutive numbers — each inmate called out his number when his turn came. “The count reached 475. My number was 157.” The militants' commander ordered all the Shiites hidden among the prisoners to step out immediately and stand to one side. When the Sunni prisoners refused to point out the Shiites, the commander killed two prisoners, forcing the Sunnis to reveal the 74 Shiites hidden among them. After that, the ISIS members interrogated the Sunni prisoners, asking them about their tribes, the areas where they lived, how they prayed and how to perform the call to prayer. Seven of the Sunni prisoners who unluckily for them had southern Iraqi accents or “Shiite names” were singled out. Then, Waadallah says, the Islamist fighters lined up the 74 Shiite prisoners along with the seven Sunnis on the edge of a deep pit over seven meters wide and three meters deep. Waadallah remembers how they were suddenly filled with terror when they reached the edge of the large hole. “Piled up in that pit were the corpses of dozens of soldiers and police officers ISIS had executed before we arrived.” When the firing started, Waadallah says, “I was hit twice; in the shoulder and in the back, then I threw myself into the pit with the falling bodies. I stayed lying there, with the prisoners’ bodies on top of me and the soldiers’ bodies underneath me, biting down with my teeth on the leg of a corpse so I wouldn’t cry out in pain.” Waadallah remembers staying waiting in that position until the ISIS members moved away. Then he managed to get out of the pit and escape in the opposite direction to their mud brick houses. After several hours walking westward, he saw the dim lights of far-off villages and managed to make his way to nearest urban area. From there he embarked on a long and dangerous journey, and with the help of the residents in the Sunni areas he passed through, reached his hometown near the capital Baghdad. The Bawabat al-Sham massacre Sixty-year-old Hamid al-Beijawi hesitated for a long time before deciding what direction to go after leaving the prison. He only had six more months of his sentence left to serve and his physical condition would not allow him to travel long distances. Al-Beijawi didn’t know it, but his slow pace would be his salvation from death. When he arrived at the Badoush crossroads the three trucks that took the prisoners to the site of the first massacre had just left. At the Bawabat al-Sham gate the ISIS members were identifying the arriving prisoners by their clothes and the disorganized groups they had formed as they walked. As soon as Beijawi arrived, the militants placed him with the hundreds of prisoners they had isolated and made sit next to the gate. There, one of the ISIS commanders ordered that the prisoners be divided into two groups — one for the Sunnis and another for the Shiites, but Beijawi belonged to the Beijat clan, of which Saddam Hussein was a member. He claimed to be a relative of the former president, and as a result was allowed — by the ISIS commander, who spoke with a Mosul village accent — to stand to one side, so he could be released after the other prisoners had been dealt with. But Beijawi wasn’t really related to Saddam. In truth, he was from the Shiite branch of the same tribe —most Sunni members of the Beijat clan reside in the northern village of al-Awja, while Shiite members live in southern areas. Nevertheless, since the 1980s, the name had been useful to him whenever he was in areas around Mosul or Western Iraq. Excluding Beijawi, the number of Shiite prisoners at the gate after they had been counted came to 304. The ISIS militants led them to the side of the road opposite to the gate “and began mowing them down with successive bursts of fire while shouting out takbirs that could be heard all over Bawabat al-Sham.” According to Beijawi’s testimony, when he set off towards Mosul, other prisoners were still arriving at the gate. As they arrived he saw the ISIS members corralling them and forcing them to sit at the side of the road in preparation for what he believes was another mass-execution. Unknown fate Mohammad Abdullah reached the Bawabat al-Sham gate after the first batch of 304 prisoners was executed. As far as he can remember this was at approximately 10:30 in the morning. At the time, the ISIS militants made him sit down with hundreds of other prisoners beside the gate. As happened with the first batch of prisoners, an ISIS commander — speaking in a Gulf accent this time — ordered that the prisoners be divided in to two Sunni and Shiite groups. At this point, Abdullah says, he “and several of the Shiite prisoners I knew moved towards the side where the Sunnis were gathering.” At that moment the ISIS members were counting the Shiite prisoners. When the number only came to 108, the commander ordered the Shiites who had joined the Sunni group to reveal themselves immediately. Then after he had identified and killed two Shiite prisoners from the among the Sunnis, 60 more joined the Shiite group voluntarily. Shortly afterwards, Abdullah says, a man with his face covered arrived in an armored Humvee flying the ISIS flag. He proceeded to identify 31 hidden Shiite prisoners, “but he failed to identify some of the hiding Shiites, myself included.” Abdullah later discovered that the disguised man was one of the Al-Qaeda commanders who had been transferred from Badoush Prison to Abu Ghraib two years previously, and probably escaped in the mass break-out at that prison on July 22, 2013. Abdullah was saved by a miracle; he left for Mosul with the other released prisoners and managed, with the help of his acquaintances, to reach his home province in Southern Iraq. However, he remembers that while he left, the group of 199 Shiite prisoners stayed where they were, awaiting their fate. So far, nobody knows what happened to them, “but they were most likely killed as well,” according to the surviving prisoner. Abdullah also remembers that before he left the Bawabat al-Sham gate and entered Mosul, three trucks passed by packed with prisoners shouting out the ISIS slogan “The Islamic State… is here to stay.” The trucks he is referring to had just returned from the site of the first massacre in Wadi Badoush and were headed for the site of the second massacre in the stone quarry near in Ayn al-Jahesh. At that moment, they were passing by the site of the third massacre at Bawabat al-Sham. Ahmad al-Sultan remembers how he escaped in the company of two men from areas near Badoush by impersonating a Sunni friend from the prison and convincing them he belonged to the Salaheddin province’s Al-Nida clan. In the time it took for the two men to convince the ISIS members that Sultan was a Sunni prisoner, and that they knew his tribe and his uncles, he slowly opened his eyes to take a look around. “Then I saw the ISIS members lead hundreds of prisoners to the side [of the road] near the Badoush gate and open fire on them.” Al-Sultan is unable to confirm whether the group he saw being executed was the first (304) or second (199), but judging by the time it took him to reach the gate “it was probably the second one.” Both Mohammad Abdullah and Ahmad al-Sultan, as well as Hamid al-Beijawi, believe it is impossible that ISIS could have released the second group, and they have not heard any stories of such a large number of Shiite prisoners being spared in one location. Massacre number 4: The outskirts of Tal Afar Most residents from in and around Tal Afar and Sinjar (Shiite Turkoman and Yazidi respectively) headed for the road that leads to those two cities, accompanied by Shiite, Yazidi and Christian prisoners who were hoping to take refuge with them. Both cities later fell to ISIS control. These prisoners walked around the prison, among them Younes al-Shammari — a Sunni prisoner from the town of Rabia to the west of Mosul. They then entered the residential area of Badoush and followed the Tigris River for more than twenty kilometers. After that, they took the Tel Afar road from which they intended to reach their own local areas. A few kilometers outside the town, ISIS members blocked their path and separated the Sunni prisoners from their non-Sunni peers. They then executed 36 Shiite and Yazidi prisoners and left their bodies at the side of the road. The remaining 15 prisoners were released, including Shammari, after they convinced the militants they were Sunnis. Shammari was unable to pinpoint the site of the execution precisely because it took place in the desert far away from any well-known residential areas. He can confirm however, that the execution took place “on the outskirts of the town of Tel Afar.” Death toll Out of the 2,700 prisoners inside the prison before the incident, 300 have either handed themselves in or been caught, according to official Ministry of Justice spokesperson Haidar al-Saadi. Meanwhile, the fate of 2,400 others remains unknown. Saadi stresses that the ministry has not yet determined the number of prisoners executed by ISIS. He says that investigations are under way to find out the actual number and the sites where they were executed. Before this, the ministry told government newspaper Al-Sabaah that the prisoners were executed at a location near Badoush Prison without mentioning any other sites. The ministry also said that it was waiting for ISIS controlled areas to be retaken to discover the number of victims (the commanders of the international coalition against ISIS do not expect to recapture Mosul until one year from now). By referring to the testimonies of survivors, the writer of this report has been able to outline an approximate number for victims of the Badoush Prison massacre. However, as the number is based on the testimonies of survivors it cannot be taken as a totally precise figure and is not binding on any party. The number of prisoners whose deaths have been confirmed, according to the survivors, are approximately: 500 prisoners in Wadi Badoush; 82 prisoners in Ayn al-Jahesh stone quarry; 306 prisoners at Bawabat al-Sham, and 36 prisoners on the outskirts of Tel Afar. Forensics experts in Mosul also received 14 bodies, and two more were discovered in the town of Balad, bringing the total number of victims to 940. At the same time, no verdict has been reached on the fate of the second group of prisoners (201) who were corralled and isolated near the Bawabat al-Sham gate and whose execution was not confirmed—notwithstanding the surviving prisoners’ belief that they were executed near the gate, which would raise the number of victims to 1141 in case of confirmation. Overlooked victims Former Premier Nouri al-Maliki’s press office, which was shut down in September, did not reveal any details on the investigations in to the withdrawal of the regiment charged with protecting Badoush Prison. Likewise, the Interior Ministry did not announce any results from the investigations in the withdrawal of federal police officers from prison’s towers and gates. This silence that surrounds the Badoush Prison case began on the day of the massacre, says Hamid Khalil, an activists from one of the victims’ families. “At the time, we didn’t hear one word condemning what happened to the Badoush prisoners from the Prime Minister, the Vice President, the Speaker of Parliament, the Minister of Justice or even the parliamentarians.” Mohammad al-Kufi, who has had no contact with his brother Ahmad since he reached Bawabat al-Sham, believes that “[the politicians] probably think the victims aren’t important enough to bother condemning their murder. [Perhaps they think] that their status as prisoners puts them at a lower level than the rest of ISIS’s victims.” Until ISIS itself reveals what it did, or the justice and interior ministries accelerate their investigations and uncover the fate of the missing prisoners, the testimonies of the seven survivors who took part in this investigation will remain the only explanation of what happened on the tenth of June to the inmates of Badoush Prison.
This is the second section of a two part report by Ahmad Hadi, originally published in Arabic, in Al-Hayat newspaper. To read the first part click here. The report was completed in cooperation with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and the Network of Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism under the supervision of Mohammad al-Rabeai and Mayada Dawoud.
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