Lost Cause
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A former Iraqi doctor claims Saddam Hussein ordered surgeons to remove the ears of army defectors and those who refused to report for military service as a form of punishment.
Saddam issued the order by presidential edict in 1994, according to an Aug. 2 story published in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper and written by Dr. Adel Awadh, an Iraqi physician who claims to have worked in a hospital that surgically removed defectors' ears.
Awadh, who had just finished his medical residency when the edict was issued, said he fled Iraq to avoid performing the surgeries, according to a translation of the article by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
"I never imagined that an Iraqi physician would be forced to perform mutilating surgeries," he said. "But this is exactly what happened – the day came when Iraqi military physicians … were forced to cut off the ears of officers and soldiers. …"
Awadh said he saw military personnel being driven to his hospital at night in handcuffs and blindfolds, then led to the operating room "like sheep to the slaughter."
MEMRI interpreters said the doctor went on to explain that about an hour later he would see the same soldiers carried out on gurneys to the vehicles that brought them, unconscious with heads bandaged.
"On the following day," he wrote, "the hospital director summoned all the surgeons to the [operating room] … because a conflict brewed among them, as some of them were trying, as much as possible, to distance themselves from performing this crime."
He said one of the surgeons "even said that most of the non-surgical physicians had the ability to perform such an operation." However, the hospital director eventually "forced all the specialists, with no exception, to perform the mutilating surgery," Awadh said he later learned.
"It seemed to me at the time that this was one way to spread the responsibility to all the surgeons … and to alleviate the burdens of the crime from the shoulders of those who performed it," he wrote.
Awadh said he continually asked himself what he'd do if he were asked to perform the operation, but said "fortunately" he was "never asked to do so."
"Some of those physicians were even afraid to walk on the streets where they lived and practiced their profession," he wrote, presumably out of fear of discovery and retribution by local residents.
Mutilation surgery, either for disciplinary reasons or motivations of bigotry, are not new but were said to be widely practiced by Nazi Germany under Adolph Hitler.
"For doctors (or indeed any others) to perform mutilating and gravely damaging surgery on an unconsenting person for wholly non-therapeutic reasons – societal/religious/cultural reasons – carries with it overtones of the doctors of Nazi Germany who performed procedures on unconsenting persons at the behest of their political masters for societal and cultural reasons," lawyer Christopher P. Price wrote in a letter to the British Medical Association in 1996.
Under the terms of the 1947 Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent of patients for medical and surgical procedures is "absolutely essential."
The code states under statutes governing medical ethics "that the person involved should have the legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision."
In a March 1991 article, Christian writer and author Jay Rogers said American soldiers giving aid and comfort to Iraqi wounded captured during the Gulf War stood out "in stark contrast to the gouged out eyes, cut-off ears, and the sliced limbs and faces of the people of Kuwait who were treated so ruthlessly by their Iraqi captors."
That claim is supported by a July 28, 2000, Newhouse News story, which cited Amnesty International officials who found out after the war that Iraqi soldiers "killed and tortured hundreds of Kuwaitis, sometimes gouging out eyes or cutting off tongues, ears or genitals. …"
Saddam issued the order by presidential edict in 1994, according to an Aug. 2 story published in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper and written by Dr. Adel Awadh, an Iraqi physician who claims to have worked in a hospital that surgically removed defectors' ears.
Awadh, who had just finished his medical residency when the edict was issued, said he fled Iraq to avoid performing the surgeries, according to a translation of the article by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
"I never imagined that an Iraqi physician would be forced to perform mutilating surgeries," he said. "But this is exactly what happened – the day came when Iraqi military physicians … were forced to cut off the ears of officers and soldiers. …"
Awadh said he saw military personnel being driven to his hospital at night in handcuffs and blindfolds, then led to the operating room "like sheep to the slaughter."
MEMRI interpreters said the doctor went on to explain that about an hour later he would see the same soldiers carried out on gurneys to the vehicles that brought them, unconscious with heads bandaged.
"On the following day," he wrote, "the hospital director summoned all the surgeons to the [operating room] … because a conflict brewed among them, as some of them were trying, as much as possible, to distance themselves from performing this crime."
He said one of the surgeons "even said that most of the non-surgical physicians had the ability to perform such an operation." However, the hospital director eventually "forced all the specialists, with no exception, to perform the mutilating surgery," Awadh said he later learned.
"It seemed to me at the time that this was one way to spread the responsibility to all the surgeons … and to alleviate the burdens of the crime from the shoulders of those who performed it," he wrote.
Awadh said he continually asked himself what he'd do if he were asked to perform the operation, but said "fortunately" he was "never asked to do so."
"Some of those physicians were even afraid to walk on the streets where they lived and practiced their profession," he wrote, presumably out of fear of discovery and retribution by local residents.
Mutilation surgery, either for disciplinary reasons or motivations of bigotry, are not new but were said to be widely practiced by Nazi Germany under Adolph Hitler.
"For doctors (or indeed any others) to perform mutilating and gravely damaging surgery on an unconsenting person for wholly non-therapeutic reasons – societal/religious/cultural reasons – carries with it overtones of the doctors of Nazi Germany who performed procedures on unconsenting persons at the behest of their political masters for societal and cultural reasons," lawyer Christopher P. Price wrote in a letter to the British Medical Association in 1996.
Under the terms of the 1947 Nuremberg Code, voluntary consent of patients for medical and surgical procedures is "absolutely essential."
The code states under statutes governing medical ethics "that the person involved should have the legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision."
In a March 1991 article, Christian writer and author Jay Rogers said American soldiers giving aid and comfort to Iraqi wounded captured during the Gulf War stood out "in stark contrast to the gouged out eyes, cut-off ears, and the sliced limbs and faces of the people of Kuwait who were treated so ruthlessly by their Iraqi captors."
That claim is supported by a July 28, 2000, Newhouse News story, which cited Amnesty International officials who found out after the war that Iraqi soldiers "killed and tortured hundreds of Kuwaitis, sometimes gouging out eyes or cutting off tongues, ears or genitals. …"
