By
Arwa Damon
CNN
"And here, a woman's shoes. She was a victim of the
militia. We found her corpse in the grave."
Chunks of hair waft lazily across the
floor in the hot
"This was the torture room,"
says Muhanad, the leader of a U.S.-backed armed group
that now controls the mosque.
"This is what they used for
hanging," he says, pointing to a cord dangling from the ceiling.
"Here is a chain we found tied to an old man's body."
The horrific scene at this
southwestern
The militia had been in control of the
mosque, called Adib al-Jumaili,
for at least a year and a half.
The neighborhood lies in an area that
became one of the capital's many sectarian fault lines when violence was at its worst.
It's been about three months since the
Mehdi Army, loyal to radical
Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr abandoned this mosque, as it withdrew from several
strongholds across the country.
Spray painted on the walls is a
chilling warning: "Spies, you will dig your own graves. Long live the Mehdi Army."
Now the mosque is under the watch of
the Sons of Iraq, a local armed group that is largely financed by the Americans
working alongside the Iraqi police. They are charged with trying to keep the
peace in the neighborhood.
Muhanad is their leader.
"We found this chain on an old
man's corpse that we dug out of the grave," he says, gesturing to a
bloodied chain on the floor. "We recovered about 22 corpses and then
another five."
Only now are people able to understand
the true magnitude of the Shia militia's atrocities
and the brutal laws they were enforcing on the people.
"This was my son's
grave," says Abu Wissam pointing to one of the
many shallow holes in the mosque's garden. "We recovered his corpse
completely rotten. His hands and legs were amputated and his head was
decapitated."
"He was just a college
graduate," his mother sobs clutching her 25-year-old son's photo.
They say the Mehdi
Army abducted their son about a year ago, accusing him of being a traitor. They
shot up and looted his home. The family fled.
A gruesome video of their son's
mutilated body was delivered to their doorstep.
"They [the militia] still raid
our homes," says Abu Wissam. "Their
families are in the district. The day before yesterday, at noon, they tried to
assassinate me, but I was able to call the police for help."
The neighborhood is eerily deserted. Most of the residents fled the
militia's reign; many who stayed bore the brunt of the violence. Homes stand
abandoned, shops shuttered, buildings shot up.
A single car drives down the main
street as a pack of dogs runs through the twisted
piles of metal that was once an outdoor market.
Lingering at the mosque are a handful of residents whose loved ones were also
abducted, looking for clues.
"They said they were just taking
him for a few minutes, for an investigation," says Karima,
who only wanted to be identified by her first name, as her eyes filled with
tears. "But they never released him and we heard he might be buried behind
the mosque."
Umm Diab's
breath comes in shallow gasps as tears flow from her turquoise-green eyes. She
wipes them away using the corner of her abaya. In her
hand, there's a passport photo of her father, who was abducted by the militia.
"All we want are their dead
bodies," she says.
While the Mehdi Army has moved out of this mosque and are less
visible on the street, residents know that they're not gone.
"They're still
threatening us," says Umm Diab.