'US forces never held accountable': Iraqi father seeks justice for son

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Ruptly
30 Jan 2023 12:17
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In an interview with Ruptly, an Iraqi father shares his tragic story of the loss of his son, as US and Iraqi authorities have refused to give him any answer.

A screengrab taken from the Ruptly interview shows the father pointing at photographs of his son.

An Iraqi father, Alaa abu Hussain, was interviewed by Ruptly on Thursday in Baghdad. His son, Hussam, was a young man who in 2006, went to celebrate his graduation with his friends on a local beach, where he was killed by a US soldier.

Abu Hussain's happiness didn't last after his son's graduation. During the interview, he narrated to Ruptly how after the graduation ceremony, his son and his friends “went to the beach and sat opposite the presidential palace in Adhamiya […] eating hamburgers and drinking Pepsi with his friends, and suddenly a shot came from the presidential palace which was controlled by the American Intelligence, unfortunately.”

According to him, the shots that killed his son came from the Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam Hussein’s villas in eastern Baghdad that was occupied by troops at that time.

The father's anger and sadness pushed him to march over to the palace, after he buried his son, and demand answers from the US troops. However, he could never get past the gate.

“Why did you hit him, what is the reason? He was eating hamburgers and drinking Pepsi. A person answered me through the radio, someone working for the Americans, he told me 'if you come back again, you will see yourself thrown on the beach'. Then I went home, I spoke to a brigadier general in the army, he told me not to go again, they shoot anyone they see on the beach,” narrated Hussain.

'US forces were never held accountable'

Fifteen years ago, he filed a lawsuit against the US Embassy over the killing of his son, but he never received a response, and stressed that the "US forces were never held accountable for the death of Hussam," he said to Ruptly.

“I filed a lawsuit through the Supreme Judicial Council, and this correspondence of the Judicial Council exists, but the Judicial Council says that it does not have authority over the American forces, because the American forces are exempt from everything, and we do not have authority over them, and they said to me 'delegate your command to God'. And I have the letter of the Judicial Council. I have been waiting for 15 years,” he stated.

According to him, The document requests that the Ministry of Defense provide names of the detachment members who were deployed in the Presidential Palace the day of the incident, while clearly displaying that the Presidential Palace was occupied by the US Special Forces.

“My message to Joe Biden is that he committed crimes against the Iraqi people, weakened the Iraqi state, divided the national decision, and attacked the national identity,” concluded Hussain.

Biden, another war criminal

US President Joe Biden was one of the 77 senators who gave President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq, back in October 2022.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union following a lawsuit filed against the federal government in January 2005 suggest that human rights violations occurred at the Adhamiya Palace, which served as a prison overseen by the US Army's 1st Cavalry Division, according to Hussain.

US military officials admitted that some troops committed abuses, always independently of senior commanders, and claimed that more than 300 criminal investigations were opened in response to allegations of prisoner mistreatment and that 100 soldiers were subjected to court-martial proceedings and administrative punishments.

Washington, along with coalition forces, occupied Iraq in March 2013, when it toppled Saddam Hussein under the pretext of disarming Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, plunging Iraq into bloodshed and chaos, resulting in the violent deaths of around 200,000 civilians, according to the Iraq Body Count project.