Shafaq News- Baghdad
Iraq’s Martyrs Foundation on Monday dismissedclaims that recently discovered mass graves in Al-Anbar province date back tothe ISIS era, describing such assertions as an attempt to “falsify history” andabsolve the former Baathist regime of responsibility.
In a statement, the foundation said specializedteams from the Mass Graves and Missing Persons Protection Department and theForensic Medicine Directorate, in cooperation with the International Commissionon Missing Persons (ICMP) and the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC), had begun excavation work at seven mass graves in the Al-Anbar desert.
The sites contain the remains of victims killedby the former regime during the 1980s, according to the foundation.
It further condemned what it described as “systematic and desperateattempts” by supporters of the former regime to mislead Iraqi society andpublic opinion by falsely claiming that the remains date to the post-2014 period.
“All evidence and forensic findings collected from the site conclusivelyprove the brutality of the crimes committed by the criminal Baathist regimeagainst those innocent victims during the 1980s,” the statement read.
The issue has triggered growing controversy in Al-Anbar,where activists, journalists, and civil figures questioned official claims thatthe graves date back to the Baath era, urging transparent forensicinvestigations and independent scrutiny. Doubts intensified after images andpersonal belongings recovered from the sites circulated online, with localobservers arguing that some materials did not appear to correspond to the 1980sor 1990s, raising speculation that the burial sites could be linked to morerecent periods of violence after 2003, following the collapse of the Al-Baathregime after the US invasion.
Civil activist Wissam Malik described the mass graves issuein Al-Anbar as “one of the most painful humanitarian issues” in Iraq, warningagainst politicization or unverified narratives and calling for clearidentification of the victims.
The disagreements come amid broader concerns over unresolveddisappearances in Iraq, where more than 26,000 people remain missing, manyallegedly abducted by armed groups during the war against ISIS (between 2014 and2017) in northern and western provinces. Iraqi forensic authorities recentlyrevealed preparations for 13,000 graves intended for identified remainsrecovered from mass grave sites across the country, while the Medico-LegalDirectorate is currently holding around 13,000 sets of remains pending DNAmatching before they can be returned to families.
