-
In the heart of Baghdad, the relentless roar of Tahrir Square’s night traffic pulses around a heavy security presence. Under the glow of streetlights, police and security cordons maintain a perimeter around an unusual sight: an open-air studio where the past is being exhumed in real-time. This is the set of Lagal Ranj, the flagship program of Rudaw hosted by the network’s prominent anchor Ranj Sangawi. Starting at 9:00 PM and broadcasting live for two grueling hours, the show serves as a platform for survivors whose lives were shattered by a regime that hoped they would be forgotten.
Before he was a defendant in a cage, Ajaj was the architect of agony at the Nugra Salman fortress. As the primary commander of the desert prison, he was the face of the Ba’ath regime’s campaign for those trapped within its walls. Survivors describe him not as a sick man, but as a “monster” who took active pleasure in the administration of torture.
He was known for carrying a thick, black cable—a tool he used indiscriminately on the elderly, pregnant women, and children. His cruelty was intimate; he did not merely order deaths but often delivered them himself, striking a six-month-old infant with a hose or kicking a six-year-old child over a barbed-wire fence.
In the investigative court, the Butcher attempted to sanitize his legacy, confessing to giving the prisoners “only one piece of hard, dry, moldy, useless bread” for three meals. But the survivors, sitting before the lens in the cool night air, remember a more visceral math. They remember the “salty water” of the desert—a liquid like acid that caused the mouths of children to rot and led to many going blind before they perished.
The Butcher’s theater was one of calculated degradation. Witnesses recount the “black dogs” of the Ar’ar desert—animals that would wait for the sun to go down to dig up the shallow, rocky graves of the recently martyred. One survivor recounts the haunting image of a black dog carrying the lungs and liver of her young brother in its mouth. For these families, a single baby bottle is not a mere prop; it is the ghost of a sister who died longing for milk while trapped in a world of dust.
The gravity of these accounts, however, hit a wall of historical amnesia just a few feet from the stage. During the live broadcast, Sangawi approached several young men from Baghdad who were watching the proceedings with casual curiosity. When asked if they knew what the “Anfal” was, the response was a chilling blankness. To this new generation, born into a post-Saddam world, the word was a verse from the Quran or a vague, unformed concept. They had no information about the systematic genocide that decimated the families standing before them.
There is a profound moral tension in this two-hour vigil. As Sangawi asks a mother to relive the death of her children—children who turned blue and smelled of decay while held in a prison cell for ten days because burial was refused—the television screen becomes a modern-day amphitheater. We watch the biological trauma unfold: the permanent mark of the cable on Amina Salih’s head and the prayer beads she carries in her pocket, which she swears still smell of her martyred son.
On May 7, the court in Baghdad postponed its verdict, retreating once more into procedural delay. But as the survivors leave the Tahrir Square studio at 11:00 PM, walking back into the heavy Iraqi night, it is clear they have carried their own verdict for 38 years. The Butcher may sit in a cage, but the survivors carry the persistence of his horror in their very marrow. They have lived the sentence; the court is merely a spectator to a truth that has never been silent.
Before he was a defendant in a cage, Ajaj was the architect of agony at the Nugra Salman fortress. As the primary commander of the desert prison, he was the face of the Ba’ath regime’s campaign for those trapped within its walls. Survivors describe him not as a sick man, but as a “monster” who took active pleasure in the administration of torture.
He was known for carrying a thick, black cable—a tool he used indiscriminately on the elderly, pregnant women, and children. His cruelty was intimate; he did not merely order deaths but often delivered them himself, striking a six-month-old infant with a hose or kicking a six-year-old child over a barbed-wire fence.
In the investigative court, the Butcher attempted to sanitize his legacy, confessing to giving the prisoners “only one piece of hard, dry, moldy, useless bread” for three meals. But the survivors, sitting before the lens in the cool night air, remember a more visceral math. They remember the “salty water” of the desert—a liquid like acid that caused the mouths of children to rot and led to many going blind before they perished.
The Butcher’s theater was one of calculated degradation. Witnesses recount the “black dogs” of the Ar’ar desert—animals that would wait for the sun to go down to dig up the shallow, rocky graves of the recently martyred. One survivor recounts the haunting image of a black dog carrying the lungs and liver of her young brother in its mouth. For these families, a single baby bottle is not a mere prop; it is the ghost of a sister who died longing for milk while trapped in a world of dust.
The gravity of these accounts, however, hit a wall of historical amnesia just a few feet from the stage. During the live broadcast, Sangawi approached several young men from Baghdad who were watching the proceedings with casual curiosity. When asked if they knew what the “Anfal” was, the response was a chilling blankness. To this new generation, born into a post-Saddam world, the word was a verse from the Quran or a vague, unformed concept. They had no information about the systematic genocide that decimated the families standing before them.
There is a profound moral tension in this two-hour vigil. As Sangawi asks a mother to relive the death of her children—children who turned blue and smelled of decay while held in a prison cell for ten days because burial was refused—the television screen becomes a modern-day amphitheater. We watch the biological trauma unfold: the permanent mark of the cable on Amina Salih’s head and the prayer beads she carries in her pocket, which she swears still smell of her martyred son.
On May 7, the court in Baghdad postponed its verdict, retreating once more into procedural delay. But as the survivors leave the Tahrir Square studio at 11:00 PM, walking back into the heavy Iraqi night, it is clear they have carried their own verdict for 38 years. The Butcher may sit in a cage, but the survivors carry the persistence of his horror in their very marrow. They have lived the sentence; the court is merely a spectator to a truth that has never been silent.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment