Iraq: US forces in Iraq partly rebuilt the faces of two bodies shown to journalists yesterday in an effort to convince Iraqis that the battle-scarred corpses were those of Saddam Hussein's widely feared sons. Andrew Marshall reports.
I was one of 15 journalists shown into an air-conditioned, khaki tent at Baghdad airport to view the corpses. They did look like the brothers, who US troops said they killed during a siege on Tuesday.
Arabic networks al-Jazeera, Abu Dhabi Television and other broadcasters began showing the bodies identified as Uday and Qusay, laid out at the makeshift airport morgue.
A US military official said "facial reconstruction" was used to repair wounds, particularly to the face of the elder son Uday, which had disfigured the bodies shown originally to the public in photographs taken by soldiers after the battle.
An uncharacteristic beard on the body of Qusay, seen in those US pictures, had been shaved off, leaving a moustache.
Inside the tent, US officials said it was standard practice to use mortician's putty to prepare bodies for viewing and was not intended to fool the Iraqi people. But while it may be common in the United States, the move is unheard of in the Arab world. That could affect Washington's efforts to quash Iraqi conspiracy theories that the bodies are not, in fact, those of the once powerful and hated sons of Saddam, who is believed to be still in hiding in Iraq.
US officials have already played down the importance of visually identifying the men, saying their dental and medical records positively identified the brothers. Four of Saddam's aides have also made positive identification, they say.
"You can make anyone look like anyone else," one US official said, insisting the medical evidence was compelling.
The brothers were lying side-by-side on metal trolleys, their bruised bodies, riddled with bullets and shrapnel, naked apart from a blue cloth that covered their genitals.
Autopsies had been performed on both men and large Y-shaped incisions marked their torsos.The officials said the bodies would be refrigerated to slow decomposition, but their fate thereafter remains unknown. - (Reuters)