Mosul morgue workers had a front row view of the unspeakable brutality of ISIS

UK Daily Mail

"Staff at the morgue sometimes faced up to 60 or 100 corpses a day as ISIS fanatics dropped them off in lorries

They saw dozens of beheaded corpses, stoned women and men who had been thrown from top of buildings

On some occasions, the terrified workers helped get bodies back to families - and even sewed heads back on

WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT "

Pictured: Chief medical assistant Raid Jassim adjusting his
gloves before inspecting a body Mosul morgue.

. . . " Yet the morgue men of Mosul found ways large and small to defy their captors by honouring the dead as best they could.

" 'Our profession as doctors is all about humanity,' said the morgue's senior examiner, Modhar al-Omari. 'They were doing the exact opposite.'  

"Some were the mangled bodies of ISIS fighters and sometimes civilians killed in bombings by the US-led coalition or fighting with Iraqi troops. Others bore the marks of ISIS's brutal enforcement of its radical version of Islamic law. 

"A broken skull on a man with internal bleeding could mean he was thrown from a rooftop, the punishment for those suspected of being gay. 

"A woman with a split skull from blunt force was likely stoned to death, the sentence for accused adulterers. Then there were punishments for spying or blasphemy: a gunshot wound through the head or decapitation.

"Convinced its 'caliphate' was here to stay, ISIS fanatics were keen on keeping records like a government. As they put together death certificates, the examiners quietly documented ISIS atrocities. 

"They surreptitiously put an Arabic letter alif to mark a member of the group, and an M, the first letter in the Arabic word for 'executed,' for the group's victims." . . .

. . . 

. . . "Al-Azzawi recounts how tragedy after tragedy gradually broke him down.

One day, he was going through the latest body bags when he saw a name he recognized pinned to a corpse. It was his cousin. The face was unrecognizable - he had been shot in the head for alleged spying.

" 'I couldn't believe it, I was reading the piece of paper over and over,' he said.

Months later, al-Azzawi tried to escape Mosul with a smuggler's help. He and a dozen others hid under boxes of potato chips in a truck but were caught near the Syrian border. He spent 10 days in detention, released only after he signed a pledge never to flee again on pain of death.

"After that, 'anything they ask for I do without complaint.'

"One day after seeing 60 bodies, he went home and smashed his TV set.

Iraqi troops liberated western Mosul in the summer of 2017, and much of the medical complex where the morgue is located was bombed into ruins during the fighting that drove out the militants.

"A stench now pervades the morgue from bodies that were in the refrigerators and are now buried in the rubble. The metal desks in the morgue offices have ISIS stickers on the drawers. Written on a wall is one of the slogans of the group: 'Baqiya' - Arabic for 'We will remain.' Next to it, someone has scrawled an insult: 'Son of dog.'

"Freed, the morgue men struggle with what they endured. Jassim can't sleep without popping multiple Valium pills. His 13-year-old son - fearing for his father - won't sleep apart from him. Some staffers have disappeared since liberation, simply not showing up to work."   Full article and photos