Page 6- The Behrend College Collegian - Thursday, February 12, NM
Former
recall horror
Iraqi
By John Daniszewski=(c) 1998, Los
Angeles Times
AMMAN, Jordan
Shehab Dein shudders at the memory
of the "meals" served up at the noto
rious Abu Ghraib prison outside
Baghdad.
A - meal - is what guards there
called the prison's periodic mass ex
ecutions. "We have a meal tomor
row," they would taunt the terrified
inmates.
During the last 20 days in Decem
ber, said Shehab Dein, there were at
least three "meals" in his section
alone. Each time, an officer would
stand in front of the two-story cell
block and read off the names of those
who were to die.
The doomed men then would have
their hands tied behind their backs
and be led away -- crying, shouting
"Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") and,
in some cases, cursing the name of
Saddam Hussein.
Later, other inmates would be or
dered into the execution chamber to
clean up.
As it was described to Shehab
Dein, the chamber was "primitive,"
ropes suspended over 12 wells.
Bound prisoners would be put into a
noose and then pushed to their deaths,
he said. Doctors were present mainly
to determine if the prisoners were
dead.
Shehab Dein, a 27-year-old Jorda
nian trader who was imprisoned last
year. is not only a rare survivor of the
Iraqi leader's Death Row. In inter
views with the Los Angeles Times,
he is also the first released inmate of
Abu Ghraib prison to publicly cor
roborate and add detail to accounts
that emerged at the end of 1997 of a
series of executions carried out
against hundreds or even thousands
of political prisoners and common
criminals in Iraq.
At the time, U.S. State Department
spokesman James Foley called the
mass execution reports "horrific" and
said they would constitute "a gross
violation of human rights" if true.
Shehab Dein's statements were
supported by a second released in-
Rifts wide as Israel turns 50
By Lee Hockstader=(c) 1998, The
Washington Post
JERUSALEM -- Although the cir
cumstances -- and threats -- today are
drastically different from those at
Israel's perilous birth 50 years ago,
the current storm clouds recall the
remark of David Ben-Gurion, the
state's founding prime minister, who
said upon leading Israel to statehood
in 1948, "I feel no gaiety in me, only
deep anxiety."
Take the case of Oman Yekutieli.
He has no particular plans to celebrate
the anniversary this spring. He'll be
too busy fighting what he considers
a war for the nation's soul.
Or take Avner Shem-Tov. He won't
be attending the carnivals, parades
and other festivities planned for the
anniversary. He'd prefer the govern
ment mark the date by cutting taxes.
In other respects, the two men --
both of them native Israelis in early
middle-age -- have little in common.
Each has a vision of how society
should work that seems to exclude the
other's.
Unusual for this nation of mostly
recent immigrants, Yekutieli is that
rare Israeli whose European Jewish
forebears have been here for six gen
erations. He is also secular to the point
of atheism and fed up with what he
sees as the encroachments of ultra-
Orthodox Judaism in Israeli life.
Having spent his twenties and early
thirties working with Palestinians in
the Israeli-occupied West Bank,
Yekutieli, now a Jerusalem city coun
cil member in his early forties, has
lately switched causes. Last year, he
founded a movement called Free Na
tion to resist the inroads that ultra-
Orthodox Jews, who now control a
inmates
prisons
mate, a 31-year-old Jordanian busi
nessman who said he was tortured
shortly after his 1995 arrest and fears
being identified by name.
Ammar
"The last weeks before Ramadan,
we heard (that) about 500 people were
killed.... We used to hear them (execu
tions) every day. - the businessman
said.
Both men were interviewed in
Amman days after their Jan. 21 release
in a surprise amnesty, announced by
Hussein, for all Jordanian prisoners.
(Hussein declared a further amnesty
Feb. 5 for all nationals of Arab coun
tries, apparently a goodwill gesture
hours after meeting with the secretary
general of the Arab League.)
The doomed men then
would have their hands
tied behind their backs
and be led away --
crying, shouting "Allahu
Akbar" ("God is great")
and, in some cases,
cursing the name of
Saddam Hussein.
According to Iraqi opposition
sources in Jordan, Britain and the
United States, Hussein's regime ex
ecuted 800 to 1,200 inmates at the Abu
Ghraib and the Radwaniyah prisons,
both near Baghdad, beginning Nov. 20
and lasting into December.
After the State Department raised
the issue Jan. 1, the Iraqi Information
Ministry angrily denied the accusa
tions, calling them another example
of the "hostile propaganda" of Iraq's
opponents.
With the world focused on Iraq's
standoff with the United States and the
United Nations over access to dis
puted sites by arms inspectors, the al
legations have elicited relatively little
attention.
But the experiences of the two Jor
danians, who went to Iraq voluntarily
for business and say they once were
sympathetic to Hussein, nevertheless
are a reminder of the unpredictable
fifth of the seats in parliament, are
making among Israel's large -- and in
many places dominant -- community
of secular Jews.
It is a battle that touches common
place aspects of daily life, such as
whether some shops and malls may
open on the Sabbath. And it also raises
questions of national identity, such as
who is considered a Jew in Israel and
whether any strand of Judaism but the
ultra-Orthodox may perform conver
sions in the country. The latter ques
tion in particular has sparked nasty
and highly personal attacks between
ultra-Orthodox Jews and those who
practice less restrictive forms of wor
ship.
"When Israel had its 20th birthday
when I was just a kid, it had all the
best reasons in the world to celebrate,"
Yekutieli said. "It had achieved such
industrial and economic and artistic
development. It had become a full
grown country, absorbing probably
five times as many people as there
were at the time of the war of inde
pendence (in 1948), and it did an in
credible job ... .
"Now, when we're reaching 50, Is
rael is in so many had turning points
that the reason for its liberation is ac
tually fading. I'd say now we've taken
a huge step backward, becoming more
and more medieval in our ways, anti
cultural, racist, chauvinist. In Jerusa
lem, we've taken a big step toward
(becoming like) Tehran."
Yekutieli's view that Israel is faced
with the threat of religious coercion
is common among secular Jews. But
his vision of a live-and-let-live Israel
is radically at odds with the view of
Israeli Jews like Shem-Tov, a mem
ber of Shas, the powerful ultra-Ortho
dox party in Prime Minister Benjamin
World and Nation
Lithuania has ties to the
midwest -- its President-Elect
By Judy Pasternak=(c) 1998, Los
Anules Times
HINSDALE, Valdas V.
Adamkus soon will he an American
president
His home stands on an oak-stud
ded hill, at the end of a private drive,
in the midsection of the United States.
Across the street, a neighbor flies
a huge Stars and Stripes.
He retired last year from a high
ranking post in the federal govern
ment, which provides him with a pen
sion worth roughly two times the sal
ary of his new job.
And he holds a U.S. passport.
Adamkus plans to retain dual citi
zenship even as he takes the helm of
a country that abuts the Baltic Sea:
Lithuania, a former piece of the now
broken Soviet Union. It is his native
land-- the land he fled more than 50
years ago, when the Soviets invaded
at the end of World War 11.
In October, he successfully chal
lenged Lithuania's residency require
ment for presidential candidates.
Then, with the help of votes from
other Lithuanians abroad, he nar
rowly edged a reformed communist
brutality taking place inside Iraq.
"If I had a choice between dying
and going back to Iraq, I would pre
fer to die." said the businessman, who
declined to discuss details of his tor
ture except to say: "Execution was
something I wanted."
Since mid-December, opposition
groups have been circulating accounts
of the executions, which they said
were ordered Nov. 19 by Hussein's
powerful younger son, Qusai, and
underscore his pre-eminent role in the
spheres of "security and repression,"
in the words of one opposition news
letter.
The Iraqi National Congress, a
U.S.-hacked anti-Hussein group, has
compiled lists naming 160 of the vic-
It said one brother of an executed
Iraqi Kurd had to comb through 12
cold-storage rooms containing 30
bodies apiece before he was able to
find his sibling and claim the remains.
The opposition Iraqi Communist
Party, meanwhile, said that apparently
109 of its followers were killed in one
Netanyahu's coalition government.
Shem-Tov, whose family came to
Israel from Central Asia, joined Shas
as a party worker at its founding a
decade ago. Like many Israeli Jews
of non-European roots, he had felt like
an outsider and second-class citizen,
firmly barred from the country's cor
ridors of power.
In Shas, he found a party for have
nots that has used the language of ra
cial aggrievement to challenge the sta
tus quo and advance its agenda. Last
week, Shas lashed out at Israel's High
Court of Justice, accusing it of elit
ism and racism against Jews of non-
European origin.
Shcm-Tov also was attracted by the
Shas party's vision of what Israel
would become -- strictly observant of
the Torah and Jewish law governing
the preparation of food, the Sabbath,
relations between men and women
and the procedures on conversion to
Judaism.
"If we'd all go back to what we
were two or three generations ago,
we'd solve these problems in society,"
said Shem-Tov, who is in his thirties.
"We should look at how our grandfa
thers all observed the Sabbath. There
are certain red lines you cannot
cross."
To Shem-Tov, many of Israel's
Jews arc hardly Jews at all, particu
larly residents of insistently secular
Tel Aviv and the nearly I million re
cent immigrants from the former So
viet states, most of whom are largely
ignorant of Judaism. "With God's
help, I hope my daughter will not
marry one," he said. "I hope they'll
open their eyes and realize they've
arrived in the land of Israel, not in
Uganda."
in the contest for a five-year term as
head of state. "I still can't believe it,"
he said.
After his inauguration later this
month, the 71-year-old Adamkus will
begin work in a 14th century palace
in Vilnius, the capital. Previous ten
ants include Czar Alexander I and Na
poleon.
Adamkus left for Lithuania late last
month after an 11-day trip home that
became a frenzied series of activities.
He met with Chicago Mayor Richard
M. Daley and Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar,
attended a reception in his honor
given by fellow members of
Chicago's Union League Club, made
a farewell visit to the Midwest office
of the Environmental Protection
Agency (where he was regional ad
ministrator) and finally -- on the very
last evening -- began "packing my
suits and shirts."
He plans to keep his wood-and
brick contemporary house here. Two
nephews and his 94-year-old mother
in-law will live in it. His wife, Alma,
Lithuania's new first lady, "will be
coming back three or four times a
year," Adamkus said.
Holding citizenship in both coun
Neither Shehab Dein nor the busi
nessman actually saw any hangings,
but both stated without hesitation that
hundreds of their fellow inmates died.
Shehab Dein's younger brother,
Jihad, said that when he visited his
brother in prison in December, he saw
other families collapse in sobs and
wails upon learning that loved ones
had been executed. He was once told
that he should leave the prison be
cause a round of executions was about
to take place, he said.
Shehab Dein, who lived in Iraq for
most of the past six years with his
family, was arrested Sept. 9 and sent
to Abu Ghraib on Dec. 10 after being
condemned to death for allegedly
buying up cheap construction equip
ment in Iraq to be dismantled and
smuggled out for sale abroad.
Although Shehab Dein and his five
brothers buy and sell heavy machin
ery, he denies being a smuggler, blam
ing his arrest on a false accusation
from a business rival who stood to
reap a significant chunk of Shehab
Army Sergeant Tells of Years
of Rebuffing McKinney's
Sexual Demands
By Bill McAllister=(c) 1998, The
Washington Post
One of the first women to serve in
the Army's elite Old Guard testified
Monday that the service's top enlisted
man repeatedly demanded sex from
her, assaulting her in his locked Pen
tagon office on a Sunday afternoon
and later on a public path near the
Lincoln Memorial.
Staff Sgt. Christine Fetrow said she
resisted the embraces of Sgt. Maj.
Gene C. McKinney but feared the
sergeant major of the Army would
"ruin my career" in retaliation.
McKinney pursued her for four years,
Fetrow said, once cautioning her:
"I'm a very powerful man that makes
thing happen -- good and bad."
Fetrow was the first of an expected
50 witnesses to testify against
McKinney in a court-martial. If con
victed, he could face 55 years in
prison and be stripped of his rank and
retirement benefits. The trial, ex
pected to last four to five weeks at
Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Va.,
could provide a window on what
some studies have said is widespread
sexual harassment of women in the
military.
McKinney, 47, who was removed
from his Pentagon job in October, is
charged with 19 counts of harassing
and assaulting six different military
women. Defense lawyers have said
that none of the witnesses is more
important than Fetrow, a military po
lice officer who was placed in a clas-
tries is permitted constitutionally.
Still, Adamkus doesn't anticipate ex
ercising his right to vote for his U.S.
counterpart in Washington. His heart
and mind are rooted now in Lithuania,
he said, and always have been.
"I am not a newcomer," he said in
English that remains accented despite
50 years of residency here. "I am not
a carpetbagger."
He published an anti-German
newspaper as a youth during the Nazi
occupation of Lithuania and was in
carcerated in a camp for displaced
persons. He stayed active in the emi
gre community here.
He regained his Lithuanian citizen
ship in 1992, one year after the So
viet Union was formally dissolved.
He traveled there often on vacation.
Yet he realizes that the seeds of his
victory lie in his American identity
and Lithuania's desire to move closer
to the West.
"I am the product of a Western so
ciety and a Western culture. I believe
strongly in democratic principles," he
said. "This is what gives me the
strength and the confidence that after
five years, I will have at least put the
country in the right direction."
Dein's assets as a reward from the
Iraqi regime
From Dec. 10 until Dec. 30, when
executions were stopped in obser
vance of the start of Ramadan, the
Muslim holy month, Shehab Dein
said, he saw or heard a total of 56 men
dragged away.
None ever returned to his section,
which housed more than 1,000 people
who had been sentenced to death for
various crimes ranging from corrup
tion to theft to murder.
Prisoners from other sections, in
cluding political prisoners and those
containing people sentenced to long
prison terms but not death, were be
ing executed daily, he said he be
lieves. Among those killed was a
friend that Shehab Dein had made
earlier at the Public Security Depart
ment cells, a likable would-be coun
terfeiter whom he knew as "Eyad the
Palestinian."
Eyad had been sentenced because
he and some others were planning to
counterfeit money, a scheme that
never even got off the ground.
sified witness protection program af
ter she agreed to testify.
The prosecutors are expected to in
troduce Tuesday a tape recording of
a telephone conversation between
McKinney and Fetrow. In the tape,
played before the presiding judge
Monday, McKinney is heard telling
Fetrow to tell investigators their con
versations were about her military
career. "That's all they need to know,"
McKinney told Fetrow.
Ten of the 19 counts deal with
Fetrow, who said McKinney began to
pursue her in 1994 when she was as
signed to the ceremonial Old Guard
unit at Fort Myer, Va., and met him at
an Army convention in Washington.
He was stationed in Europe at the
time, but continued his pursuit after
he assumed the top enlisted job at the
Pentagon in July 1995, she said.
Earlier, defense and prosecution
attorneys painted starkly different
portraits of the man who rose from
recruit to the Army's top enlisted job
in 29 years. Military prosecutor Capt.
Brian 0. Dolan called McKinney "a
Jekyll and Hyde," a charmer in pub
lic who was devoted to his military
duty but in private would turn on
women and demand sex.
Defense lawyer Lt. Col. James
Gerstenlauer portrayed McKinney as
a man wrongly accused by women
who were unable to meet his high
standards of military conduct and
were eager to manipulate the military
for favors. Picking through the 19
charges against the sergeant major, the
His first order of business is to at
tack deep-rooted corruption, "to re
store the confidence of the people and
get their respect so that we can be
trusted among free nations." He wants
to help Lithuania move closer to
NATO and European Union member
ship -- the country is now on the back
burner as far as those groups are con
cerned.
Adamkus gained a measure of fame
when he testified to Congress in 1983
that top EPA officials in Washington
changed a report that accused Dow
Chemical Co. of polluting Michigan
streams with the toxic chemical di
oxin. EPA administrator Anne
Burford was later forced to resign.
Two years later, at the White House,
President Reagan presented him with
the government's highest award for a
civil servant, the Distinguished Ex
ecutive Presidential Rank.
But the closest he got to elective
office was a failed run for the Metro
politan Sanitary District Commission
in Chicago.
He will miss, he said, his friends,
his former co-workers, golf and the
Chicago Bulls. And he will miss his
low-key life.
"It was not a crime worthy of
death," his friend said.
Shehab Dein said he was in a 5-
foot-square cell with three other con
demned men. They took turns sleep
ing. But that was "paradise" compared
to other cells of the same dimensions
packed with seven or eight prisoners.
He said he was sentenced to die
based on a confession he never made
and upon the written testimony of two
"witnesses" whom he had never met
and who were not even at his trial.
Iraq executed four Jordanian stu
dents Dec. 9 for smuggling, despite
repeated entreaties from Jordan's
King Hussein that they be spared.
Shehad Dein, who had been con
demned Dec. 7, said he believed that
he surely would be the next to die. But
he got a reprieve when Saddam
Hussein suddenly ordered all Jorda
nians in his prison let go, apparently
to mollify Jordanian anger.
"I thought I was dead," Shehad
Dein murmured, recalling the mo
ment he learned that he would escape
the noose. "But I was reborn."
lawyer repeatedly told the jury -- four
officers and four enlisted members --
that "the bottom line is that this didn't
happen. The sergeant major is not
guilty."
McKinney is a devoted soldier who
has spent "29 years caring about the
Army -- our Army," Gerstenlauer
said. "He could be a hard man if he
had to he," he said, but McKinney
always lived by the credo of the
Army's noncommissioned officers:
that his soldiers came first.
The Army's case against McKinney
amounts to six separate trials
Gerstenlauer said, singling out each
of the women who will testify against
the sergeant major. They're coming
forward with motives of "revenge,
reward and deceit," all determined "to
bring down a leader," he said.
Other witnesses came forward only
under grants of immunity when they
should in fact be subject to prosecu
tion for their actions, Gerstenlauer
said. The defense lawyer offered some
of his harshest criticism for retired
Army Sgt. Maj. Brenda Hoster,
McKinney's former public affairs
aide, who triggered the investigation
with her complaints to the news me
dia about McKinney. Gerstenlauer
called Hoster a publicity seeker who
hoped to become "the spokeswoman
for the women in the military," a star
witness on Capitol Hill who was at
tempting to hide some of her short
comings as a speech writer.