Iraqis waiting at a traffic light in the central province of Babil on Monday were distressed to see a pick-up truck carrying a pile of corpses to a cemetery.
Authorities said photos and videos of the bodies shared widely on Iraqi social media accounts were authentic.
In the images, corpses are seen piled on top of one another in the rear of the truck and covered in black material, with some bare feet visible from the open tailgate.
Despite the disgust it sparked, authorities said all legal obligations for the driver, the vehicle and the permit to bury the nine corpses in the charity cemetery of Wadi As Salam, in the southern city of Najaf, had been met.
“The nine bodies belonged to unidentified people and they were kept in the local mortuary for more than the legal period required by law,” the director of Babil Health Information, Ali Jabbar, told the official Iraqi News Agency on Monday.
He said the onus of transportation is on a charity or a benevolent person, who steps up to help bury the unidentified bodies in local mortuaries across Iraq.
“[But] we usually hand over the corpses first [after the legal period] to the municipality or local police to arrange for [charge-free] burial procedure.”
According to Iraqi law, if none of the deceased’s relatives comes to the hospital to collect the body of a deceased Iraqi citizen within 72 hours of the official pronouncement of death, the body should be kept in the hospital’s refrigerator for 15 days.
If no one claims the body in this time, it will be kept at a government-run Faculty of Medicine for a period of 90 days.
Disgust and anger
Iraqis reacted on social media with disgust at the treatment of the dead bodies.
“It is in many ways the story of our time,” said one tweet, that also used Iraqi slang to curse rampant corruption and dire public services.
There is no official data about the number of unidentified corpses laid to rest every year in Iraq.
But local media outlets reported that the three main charity cemeteries — in Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf — received around 1,000 dead bodies in 2019 and 2020.
Forensic and post-mortem reports have said that some of the unidentified bodies are victims of organised crime networks while others are related to kidnappings and extortion.
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DMZ facts
- The DMZ was created as a buffer after the 1950-53 Korean War.
- It runs 248 kilometers across the Korean Peninsula and is 4km wide.
- The zone is jointly overseen by the US-led United Nations Command and North Korea.
- It is littered with an estimated 2 million mines, tank traps, razor wire fences and guard posts.
- Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un met at a building in Panmunjom, where an armistice was signed to stop the Korean War.
- Panmunjom is 52km north of the Korean capital Seoul and 147km south of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.
- Former US president Bill Clinton visited Panmunjom in 1993, while Ronald Reagan visited the DMZ in 1983, George W. Bush in 2002 and Barack Obama visited a nearby military camp in 2012.
- Mr Trump planned to visit in November 2017, but heavy fog that prevented his helicopter from landing.
Yemen's Bahais and the charges they often face
The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
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