Saddam Hussein's alleged shredder
Encyclopedia
In the runup to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, press stories appeared in the United Kingdom
and United States
of a plastic shredder into which Saddam
and Qusay Hussein
fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action, in stories with titles such as "See men shredded, then say you don't back war". A year later, it was determined there was no evidence to support the existence of such a machine.
after returning from research in northern Iraq.
Ann Clwyd
wrote in The Times six days later, an article entitled "See men shredded, then say you don't back war," saying that an unnamed Iraqi had said the Husseins used a shredder to gruesomely kill male opponents, and used their shredded bodies as fish food. Later she would add that it was believed to be housed in Abu Ghraib prison
, and spoke with an unidentified person who claimed the shredders were dismantled "just before the military got there". Two days later Australian Prime Minister John Howard
made reference to the "human-shredding machine".
Melanie Phillips
wrote in The Daily Mail, saying that the machine resulted in "bodies...chewed up from foot to head". In William Shawcross
' 2003 book Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq, he claimed that Saddam Hussein "fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony".
The Sun
s political editor Trevor Kavanagh
wrote in February 2004 that "Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair
as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders."
with the Assyrian Church, and one of the anti-war human shields that had entered Iraq in 2003. He reportedly found that, far from trying to avoid conflict, Iraqis were in favour of an American invasion, and "would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start." He promptly reversed himself and exited the country after hearing this and first-hand accounts of Saddam's shredding machine: "Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head." Johann Hari
, a British supporter of the Iraq war, quoted Joseph saying the trip "shocked me back to reality" in a column in The Independent
published March 26 2003 .
and The Guardian
in February 2004, asking Clwyd and Mahon to provide evidence or the names of the Iraqis who gave them the story. He spoke with the doctor who dealt with executed prisoners at Abu Ghraib during Saddam Hussein's rule, who said that all executions were performed by hanging
, and denied claims that there was a shredder of any type.
Clwyd responded to O'Neill's allegations in The Guardian later the same month, stating:
No further evidence for the existence of the shredder has ever been published, though a witness at Saddam's trial in December 2005 claimed to have seen it. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti
, barracked the witness, shouting he "should act in the cinema." O'Neill returned to the topic in February 2010, writing "Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch, in their numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Iraq, had ever heard anyone talk of a human-shredding machine."
An investigation into the Rev. Kenneth Joseph Jr. by CounterPunch
revealed serious discrepancies in his story. Groups that organized the human shield action in Iraq
say they have no record of him, and "no one, it seems, ever met him." Human shield activists speculated that if Joseph had gone to Iraq he was likely "motivated by his campaign for 'Assyrian Independence' rather than the welfare of the Iraqi people in the face of an invasion." Moreover, Bishop Mar Bawai Soro of the Assyrian Church announced that Joseph was not a pastor as he claimed, and had no connection to their organisation.
The incident is sometimes compared to the story of Iraqi soldiers "throwing babies from incubators" during the invasion of Kuwait
in October 1990. This influential report was presented as the 'eye-witness testimony' of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, Nurse Nayirah
; only years later did it emerge that she was the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah
, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and that the story itself was entirely the creation of the Hill & Knowlton
public relations firm employed by the Kuwaitis.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
of a plastic shredder into which Saddam
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and Qusay Hussein
Qusay Hussein
Qusay Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was the second son of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He was appointed as his father's heir apparent in 2000.- Family :...
fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action, in stories with titles such as "See men shredded, then say you don't back war". A year later, it was determined there was no evidence to support the existence of such a machine.
Press reports
The first mention of the plastic shredder came at a March 12, 2003 meeting, when James Mahon addressed the British House of CommonsBritish House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
after returning from research in northern Iraq.
Ann Clwyd
Ann Clwyd
Ann Clwyd Roberts is a Welsh Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Cynon Valley since 1984.-Early life:Ann Clwyd is the daughter of Gwilym Henri Lewis and Elizabeth Ann Lewis...
wrote in The Times six days later, an article entitled "See men shredded, then say you don't back war," saying that an unnamed Iraqi had said the Husseins used a shredder to gruesomely kill male opponents, and used their shredded bodies as fish food. Later she would add that it was believed to be housed in Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
, and spoke with an unidentified person who claimed the shredders were dismantled "just before the military got there". Two days later Australian Prime Minister John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
made reference to the "human-shredding machine".
Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She began her career on the left of the political spectrum, writing for such publications as The Guardian and New Statesman. In the 1990s she moved to the right, and she now writes for the Daily Mail newspaper, covering political and social...
wrote in The Daily Mail, saying that the machine resulted in "bodies...chewed up from foot to head". In William Shawcross
William Shawcross
William Hartley Hume Shawcross, CVO is a British writer and commentator.-Career:Shawcross was educated at St. Aubyns Preparatory School, Rottingdean, Eton College and University College, Oxford. He attended St. Martin's Art School to study sculpture after leaving Oxford. He worked as a journalist...
' 2003 book Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq, he claimed that Saddam Hussein "fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony".
The Sun
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
s political editor Trevor Kavanagh
Trevor Kavanagh
Trevor Michael Thomas Kavanagh is a journalist and formerly the Political Editor of the Sun newspaper.Trevor Kavanagh was educated at Reigate Grammar School before leaving school at 17 to work for newspapers in Surrey and later Hereford. In 1965 he emigrated to Australia, working on several...
wrote in February 2004 that "Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders."
Rev. Kenneth Joseph
For Americans, a major domestic source for the shredder story was the testimony of Ken Joseph Jr. Joseph claimed to be a pastorPastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
with the Assyrian Church, and one of the anti-war human shields that had entered Iraq in 2003. He reportedly found that, far from trying to avoid conflict, Iraqis were in favour of an American invasion, and "would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start." He promptly reversed himself and exited the country after hearing this and first-hand accounts of Saddam's shredding machine: "Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head." Johann Hari
Johann Hari
Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize...
, a British supporter of the Iraq war, quoted Joseph saying the trip "shocked me back to reality" in a column in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
published March 26 2003 .
Doubts surface
Brendan O'Neill challenged the existence of the shredder in The SpectatorThe Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
in February 2004, asking Clwyd and Mahon to provide evidence or the names of the Iraqis who gave them the story. He spoke with the doctor who dealt with executed prisoners at Abu Ghraib during Saddam Hussein's rule, who said that all executions were performed by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
, and denied claims that there was a shredder of any type.
Did he ever attend to, or hear of, prisoners who had been shredded? "No." Did any of the other doctors at Abu Ghraib speak of a shredding machine used to execute prisoners? "No, no, never."
Clwyd responded to O'Neill's allegations in The Guardian later the same month, stating:
Brendan O'Neill was told by my office, but chose not to include in his article, the following information. In his statement, the witness who said that people were killed by the shredder was very specific: he named individuals who he said were killed in the shredder and the individuals who he said supervised the execution by shredder; he stated where the shredder was located and the month and year when the executions took place. The witness was closely questioned by Indict researchers and was described by them as being "unshakeable". He said he is also prepared to testify in court about the incident.
No further evidence for the existence of the shredder has ever been published, though a witness at Saddam's trial in December 2005 claimed to have seen it. Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti
Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti
Barzan Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti was one of three half-brothers of Saddam Hussein, and a leader of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service...
, barracked the witness, shouting he "should act in the cinema." O'Neill returned to the topic in February 2010, writing "Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch, in their numerous investigations into human rights abuses in Iraq, had ever heard anyone talk of a human-shredding machine."
An investigation into the Rev. Kenneth Joseph Jr. by CounterPunch
Counterpunch
Counterpunch can refer to:* Counterpunch , a punch in boxing* CounterPunch, a bi-weekly political newsletter* Counterpunch , a type of punch used in traditional typography* Punch-Counterpunch, a Transformers character...
revealed serious discrepancies in his story. Groups that organized the human shield action in Iraq
Human shield action to Iraq
Human shield action to Iraq was a group of people who travelled to Iraq to act as human shields with the purpose of preventing the U.S.-led coalition troops from bombing certain locations during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.- Chronology :...
say they have no record of him, and "no one, it seems, ever met him." Human shield activists speculated that if Joseph had gone to Iraq he was likely "motivated by his campaign for 'Assyrian Independence' rather than the welfare of the Iraqi people in the face of an invasion." Moreover, Bishop Mar Bawai Soro of the Assyrian Church announced that Joseph was not a pastor as he claimed, and had no connection to their organisation.
The incident is sometimes compared to the story of Iraqi soldiers "throwing babies from incubators" during the invasion of Kuwait
Kuwait
The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
in October 1990. This influential report was presented as the 'eye-witness testimony' of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, Nurse Nayirah
Nurse Nayirah
Nayirah refers to the controversial testimony given before the non-governmental Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a female who provided only her first name, Nayirah...
; only years later did it emerge that she was the daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah
Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah
Shaikh Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah is a member of the Kuwait House of Al-Sabah ruling family and the former Kuwaiti ambassador to U.S.His daughter Nayirah and himself were reportedly involved in Citizens for a Free Kuwait which was a front group established by the Kuwaiti government to promote the...
, Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and that the story itself was entirely the creation of the Hill & Knowlton
Hill & Knowlton
Hill & Knowlton is a global public relations company, headquartered in New York City, United States, with 79 offices in 44 countries. Hill & Knowlton was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1927 by John W. Hill and is today led by Chairman & CEO, Paul Taaffe...
public relations firm employed by the Kuwaitis.