Saddam's House of Horrors

A Saddam Hussein house of horrors museum is set to open in the New Year in Baghdad, it emerged today – the second anniversary of the dictator’s hanging.
The exhibition includes a man-shaped iron cage used to torture unsuccessful athletes, bloodstained noose and battle plans for the extermination of rebellious Kurds.
It is designed to send a clear message that even the most feared dictator cannot hope to evade justice. Brutal: The judge who sentenced Saddam to death hopes he isn't forgotten
and it was created by Judge Arif Abdul Razak al-Shaheem, whose tribunal sentenced Saddam to death. ’We thought that people might forget the works committed by dictators who committed horrible acts against them,’ he said.
‘This is not related to national reconciliation. This museum is about history. History must not be forgotten.’
The museum will showcase torture devices such as a man-shaped metal cage where, in the Iraqi Olympic Centre, Saddam’s son Uday used to lock under-performing athletes for weeks at a time - and set them naked under the burning sun, the metal searing their flesh.
There is a steel bar from an intelligence

Torture device: Under-performing athletes were put in this cage and left in the sun
It will include personal effects found with Saddam when he was discovered hiding on an Iraqi farm in December 2004, including a Quran, a cassette recording of Mozart, a dusty black briefcase.
Chairs will be on display that were sat in by Saddam and his top lieutenants during their High Tribunal trials, including the one that ended in Saddam’s execution for killing 148 men and boys following an assassination attempt in 1982.
The museum will also have a research centre where legal researchers or historians can comb through 26million documents, including the handwritten orders to crush opposition from minority Kurds, which led to the death of tens of thousands.
A floor below Judge Shaheen’s office, the High Tribunal continued on Tuesday proceedings against Ali Hassan al-Majeed, a Saddam confidante known as 'Chemical Ali; for his role in gassing Kurds, and Tareq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister, on charges they systematically crushed political opponents.
Majeed has already been sentenced twice to death, but his execution has been held up by political disputes. Since Saddam was executed, his half brother and several other officials have been sent to the gallows as well.

Grim: A noose used to hang Saddam's opponents
The new case against Majeed, Aziz and over 20 others revolves around the arrest and execution of tens of thousands of members of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawa party.
Its timing rankled some politicians outside Maliki’s sphere, who complained it was a bid to influence provincial elections next month that will be a test of rival parties’ influence and will set the tone for parliamentary polls in late 2009.
Violence has dropped sharply, but Iraq risks backsliding into civil war if it can’t bury deep political grievances. Judge Shaheen rejected that any of the tribunal’s dozen or so cases have been politicised, just as he sought to separate the new Saddam museum from the fractious politics of Iraq today, where former enemies have yet to fully reconcile.