In an interview with the international organization Human Rights Watch, Settar Khalaf, a cattle herder living near Basra in southern Iraq, recounted a day in spring 1999. In a remote area where Khalaf regularly took his herd, he saw a bulldozer dig three trenches. The following morning he watched several buses and six government cars arrive on the site. Hiding close to the vehicles, Khalaf saw men in military attire exiting from the cars and removing prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed, from the buses. According to his estimates, there were approximately one hundred people in the buses. The prisoners were led in a line to the trenches, into which they were placed one by one. Seconds later, the men in uniform began shooting at the prisoners with machine guns and pistols for several minutes. Then a bulldozer covered up the...