We Spoke to Haditha Massacre Survivors — They Still Want Justice
The small Iraqi town of Haditha was the site of a notorious 2005 massacre in which US Marines killed two dozen civilians. Twenty years later, our reporter speaks with the family members who survived and are still waiting for justice.
Raseef holds up an image of the bodies of his relatives. Ayda Yassin Ahmed, 40, and four of her children lie executed by US Marines in Haditha. The photograph was among the evidence documenting the close-range killings. Only one daughter, Safa, 11, survived. (Jaclynn Ashly / Jacobin)
Khaled Salman Raseef remembers being jolted awake by a loud explosion near his home on the morning of November 19, 2005 — an event that marked its twentieth anniversary last month.
In Haditha, a once-peaceful Iraqi city along the Euphrates River, such sounds had become routine. The close-knit neighborhoods had been transformed into a war zone after the US invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein more than two years earlier. Insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda, had taken root here to fight US forces.
By then, Raseef and his neighbors had a routine for when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded and US raids followed. They hid the elderly, women, and children in a back room, while the men opened the doors and tried to speak calmly. Whatever happened — whether troops burst in with assault rifles raised or smashed furniture — the rule was always the same: stay polite, Raseef says, speaking in his home in Haditha.
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