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Saddam Hussein Reportedly Kept A Hidden Torture Chamber On The UES
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Oct 13, 2016
Modified Oct 13, 2016
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Oct 13, 2016
Modified Oct 13, 2016
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Saddam Hussein, a brutal dictator whom a certain GOP presidential candidate recently hailed for being "so good" at killing terrorists, apparently had a secret detention room inside an Upper East Side mansion located across the street from former mayor Mike Bloomberg's home, according to a rather unsettling exposé in the NY Post.
Two anonymous Iraqi officials tell the Post that when Hussein came to power in 1979, he turned a room inside the Mission of Iraq (located on 79th Street between Madison and 5th Avenue) into a so-called "detention room." There, members of the Iraqi intelligence Service—the Mukhabarat—would imprison and torture local Iraqis whose family members still living in Iraq had angered the government.
Torture tactics included pulling out prisoners' nails, beating them, and torturing them with copper wire, rubber hoses, and wooden planks. Agents would kill prisoners and send them back to Baghdad in diplomatic boxes. “It was a dark room. The doors were reinforced in a way that nobody could break in or out. You didn’t need to soundproof it,” an official told the Post, with another telling reporters, "You’re not going to hear someone screaming down there."
Officials in Iraq would alert the Mukhabarat in New York when they were unhappy with a citizen's activities, and the Mukhabarat would wait for their relatives to arrive at the Mission before kidnapping them. "Mukhabarat wouldn’t bring the relative of the target to the mission. They would lay in wait like a snake for the relative to arrive for some ex-pat business and then grab him and lock him into the room," one official told the Post.
Hussein's regime fell in 2003, and the detention room—one of many across the world—has since been turned into a kitchenette, of all things. Still, #neverforget that Mayor Bloomberg once neighbored a makeshift Lefortovo.
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saddam hussein
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upper east side
Rebecca Fishbein
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