Mohammed Majul Hamoud, a 24-year-old survivor who spoke to Reuters in his home town of Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, said he was spared because he pretended to be a Sunni Muslim Bedouin.
In the worst known massacre during Islamic State’s war, Hamoud was held by the militants for 11 days in June and recounted their systematic killings in chilling detail.
He belonged to a group of 1,500 soldiers fresh from basic training. As word came of Islamic State’s advance, the group was sent to Camp Speicher near Tikrit city.
Having trouble breathing from his beatings, Hamoud spoke of betrayal by his own commanders at Speicher, who he said had promised recruits like himself safe passage out when Islamic State took Tikrit yet allowed them to be led to their deaths.
‘We were sold and deceived,’ Hamoud said. Hamoud and his comrades had no rifles or pistols and found that the armoury at Speicher was empty.
The senior commander for the province, General Ali al-Freiji, told the soldiers a deal had been reached with local tribes to allow the units to leave, according to Hamoud and two other soldiers.
Government officials deny this. They say there was no promise of safe passage, and the unarmed recruits left the safety of the base despite having been ordered to stay.
Freiji departed and the next day, Sunni tribesmen entered the base to escort them out. Most soldiers were afraid to go, Hamoud said. ‘The tribes assured us we are under their protection, and that we are going to Samarra.’
On June 10, the al Qaeda offshoot then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant burst into northern Iraq, riding out of the desert to seize Mosul, the biggest city in the north. Iraq’s army, trained and equipped by the United States at a cost of 25 billion dollars, mostly fled, abandoning American Humvees and arsenals of weapons to the fighters.
Within a day of taking Mosul, the fighters were barrelling through the Tigris river valley towards former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home city of Tikrit, which they would swiftly capture with barely a fight.
Just outside the city, thousands of Iraqi troops found themselves besieged inside the Al-Sahra air base, still known as Camp Speicher after a US navy pilot, the name it was given when it served as one of the main bases for American forces until they withdrew in 2011.
Hamoud belonged to a group of 1,500 new soldiers fresh from basic training. As word came of the Islamic State’s advance, the soldiers were sent to Speicher to regroup.
The new recruits like Hamoud had still not been issued rifles. When they arrived at Speicher they searched its armoury for weapons but found it was empty, realising they would be left unarmed when the fighters approached.
Much of the dispute focuses on the role played by the senior commander for the province, General Ali al-Freiji, and his deputies.
According to Shalal, Hamoud and a third soldier who described the events to Reuters, Freiji and his top officers stopped at Speicher and told the soldiers they had 15 days leave. After efforts fell through to evacuate the troops in a vehicle convoy or by air, Freiji announced an agreement had been brokered to allow them safe passage to walk out and find transport for Samarra, a city to the south, the soldiers said.
Freiji was last seen by his soldiers on the morning of the massacre. State television reported that the general stayed in the Tikrit area, leading combat at another location.
Hamoud’s group included his brother Kamil and four cousins. When it was Hamoud’s turn to stand up and be taken for execution, he spoke in a Bedouin accent.
He said: ‘Can you spare a drink of water.’
They asked where he was from. He lied and told them he belonged to the Shummar, a large tribe with both Sunnis and Shi’ites, and came from Baiji, a Sunni town to the north.
They removed him from the line as his brother and cousins were taken outside where other soldiers had been executed.
‘They handcuffed and blindfolded me and let me sit down,’ Hamoud said.
He had no time to dwell on his brother, he said, but now holds out a faint hope for his survival.
‘There is a chance,’ he said, praying that his brother and cousins escaped.
The shooting stopped at around dawn and Hamoud saw that the room that had been filled with hundreds now had only 20.
A man with a Saudi accent began to interrogate Hamoud and the others to determine if they were really Sunni Muslims.
Hamoud had invented a fake name for himself, Bandar, to hide from them that he was a Shi’ite. He avoided praying, explaining as a Bedouin he was not in the habit.
Under rapid-fire questioning, those believed to be lying were summarily shot. Hamoud’s group shrunk to 11.
After a few days, a missile hit the compound. The chandelier in the room shattered and two men tried to escape. Hamoud loosened his handcuffs and watched from the window as the two soldiers were gunned down. He retightened his handcuffs. Finally on his 10th day in captivity, an IS fighter said they were being freed. One of his guards told him, ‘You, the Bedouin: tell your people we don’t harm the Sunnis, and that we were giving you good food, water and everything you need.’ The next day, six of them were escorted to a house, where a final investigative committee interrogated him. ‘They asked me if I performed daily prayer. I said no. One of them told us: ‘take him and teach him how to pray’. They dragged me as I was too weak to walk and started to beat me.’
His group of 11 were driven to a nearby checkpoint and given a number to ring if they were stopped at any Islamic State checkpoint.
Source: The Shillong Times
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