Appendix A

Personal Statement by Dr Kamal Ketuly

While I was in the second year of my Ph.D. at Glasgow University Chemistry Department, I received news in mid-April 1980 that the present Iraqi Government had, without prenotification, deported my father mother, sisters and brothers, along with my uncles, cousins, hundreds of my immediate Kurdish relatives and tens of thousand of Iraqi citizens (Kurds and Arabs) to Iran, accusing them of being Iranians.

During the deportations the Iraqi Government confiscated my family's, uncles' and other deportees properties and belongings: al their bank savings and, in addition, they were stripped of their Iraqi Citizenship by the confiscation of their Iraqi Citizenship Documents, including their passports. In addition to this, they retained from our families certain members, mainly men (16-40 years) as hostages and put them in various prisons and concentration camps in Iraq.

Mr brother Jamal was, at that time, doing his Iraqi National Service, within six months of his graduation from Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The Iraqi Authorities did not deport him with the rest of my family, but detained him as a hostage to ensure that my family did not resist or make a public protest about their deportation to a foreign country, Iran.

My brother Jamal in military uniform, 1980, before detention

They transferred him from one prison to another: Military Astakhbarat, Baghdad Security, Baghdad General, the Military no. 1 Prison, Al-Fathalia Prison, until he ended up in Abu Ghraeb Prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. He was visited by some remaining relatives at Abu Ghraeb Prison until 30th April 1981. At this date, Jamal and the other detainees stages a hunger strike and a protest at Abu Graeb Prison. Barazan Al-Tikrity (the brother of Mr Saddam Hussein, the current President of Iraq) came to speak to the detainees and told them 'we are detaining you here because of the Iran/Iraq war. He stressed that they would be released the moment the war ended.

In July 1981, the remaining detainees in Abu-Ghraeb Prison told us that in the middle of that month my brother, along with 750 other detainees, had been transferred to an unknown destination. From that time up until 1989, we only heard about the existence of my brother Jamal in an un-named prison in Iraq, but we have had no first hand or direct information about him from then until now.

The names of my cousins, still detained in Iraq are:
4 Ali Rahim brothers - Hadi, Muneer, Majed and Nazar
4 Khudada Rahim brothers - Shakir, Mahmood, Ahmed and Karim
2 Mansor twins - Jaleel and Jalal
Nazar Aziz Mohammed Khosro

My cousins in Qalat Al Salman, 1985, during a visit 4 brothers: Hadi (born 1949, lawyer), Muneer (born 1952, accountant), Majeed (born 1960, student), Nazar (born 1962, student) and Nazar Khosro (born 1961, student) all born and resident in Baghdad

These cousins, and hundreds of other detainees, were transferred on 5 December 1984 to Qalat Al-Salman Prison in the south-west of Iraq. The remaining relatives in Iraq were then allowed to visit them in this prison and they have photographs of my cousins taken during their visits. They were allowed to visit them once a month up until 1988. In June 1986, the present Iraqi Government came to Qalat Al-Salman Prison and offered to release the detainees on condition that they complete their National Service. They gave them military uniform to wear and then took them away that month. From then until now nobody has heard from them.

Now the two Gulf Wars have ended the Iraqi Government has released many Iranian prisoners of war and all 'human shields' used during the Kuwait invasion, whilst my brother and the rest of the hostages are still not released. We don't even know where they have been kept, if we could visit them or even, at least, exchange a letter with them and determine how long the present Iraqi Government intends keeping them and to give us any relelvant information as to whether they are alive or dead.

Many of my own relations have suffered from depression or become ill and even died owing to worry about the fate of our relatives, who are hostages. My mother was constantly worrying about my brother and crying for him from the time he was arrested. She became clinically depressed and then fell ill with leukemia. She died in April 1984, aged 54. The last thing she said, was that she wanted to see my brother before she died, but she was too ill and her wish was not granted. Three weeks after my mother's death, my younger sister Theekra, who was only 20 years old, committed suicide. She left a note, saying that she had nothing left in the world after her mother's death; that every year she had hoped her brother would be released, but it had taken all these years and that her mother was buried alone in a foreign country and she wanted to join her.

My aunt, the mother of the twins Jaleel and Jalal, who are still being detained, has been suffering from depression for a long time and died in summer 1993, aged 62. My grandmother went into a coma and died two weeks later from the shock of seeing my brother Jamal being arrested. He was doing National Service when he was arrested. While he was away on Service much of the family was deported and he only found this out when he went home on leave. He was then arrested when he returned from leave, but allowed to go home, handcuffed to a soldier, to collect his belongings. The shock of seeing him like this and the anxiety of what was going to happen to him, on top of all the worry about the family who had been deported, was too much for my grandmother who had a stroke and then died.

The remainder of my family obtained asylum in Sweden, where my elder brother Sami was studying, in October 1980. They are still living in Sweden, having obtained Swedish citizenship in 1984. I am still living in Scotland and obtained British citizenship in 1990.

These hostages are not prisoners of war, they are not prisoners of conscience, they are not political prisoners, nor have they been charged with any crime. They certainly are not, as the Iraqi Government claims 'Iranians living in Iraq'. If they are, then why not release them and deport them to join their deported families?

All our deported families have suffered daily from 1980 until now and many of them have died purely from the anxiety concerning news of their hostages. Surely this matter is purely humanitarian. We would like to ask everyone to raise their voice and put pressure on the British Government to intervene, just as they have recently succeeded in releasing the three British detainees in Baghdad, and for them to mediate with the Iraqi Government to release OUR hostages.