The clash of November 28th, 1982 in Musel camp 1

During the years of captivity of Iranian prisoners in the camps of the Iraqi Ba'ath regime, numerous challenges and clashes had occurred between the prisoners and the Iraqi forces, which, depending on the intensity of the Iraqis' treatment and the resistance of the prisoners, have marked as turning points in the history of the Holy Defense of the Iranian people.

One of these clashes took place in the Musel   camp 1 ( the Old Musel 2 or the Greater Musel) on the 28^th of November, 1982 and resulted in the martyrdom of three people and the injury of about five hundred prisoners.

The cause of this clash was the unreasonable desire of the Iraqis to separate the army prisoners from those who were members of the Islamic militia. About two months before this incident (around October 1982), a number of resistant officers of the Islamic Republic Army were transferred to the camp. They, who had been in the same prison as Haj Agha Abu Torabi Fard in Baghdad for some time, bore a message from him according to which they were to avoid tension and conflict with the Baathists and to preserve their mental and physical health , which unfortunately was not welcomed due to the lack of a coherent leadership. .

One or two days before Moharram, the holding of  a session in which the captives mourned for Imam Hossein secretly in a sanatorium, was revealed to the Iraqis through the negligence of Iranian guards. The Iraqis, who were opposed to any collective activity of the prisoners, were faced with a congregation of 2300 people in a sanatorium. Totally enraged, the Iraqis asserted that holding any sort of religious ceremonies or rituals in military centers was criminalized and would be severely punished. Then, they shut the doors of the sanatorium and limited the break times.

In the first days of the month of Moharram, the prisoners started mourning again, ignoring the threat of the Iraqis, and the Iraqis in return limited  the hours of  their break time. After the protests of the functionaries of the sanatoriums and those of the camp, the Iraqis agreed to open the doors for half an hour on the day of Tasua ( the ninth day of Moharram). The captives of sanatorium 1 went out and started mourning. This caused the Iraqis to send them back by force inside the sanatorium and to keep them locked up until the end of Ashura.

After the first 10 days of Moharram, the rumor concerning the separation of army officers from the members of the Islamic militia began to circulate again. Iraqis figured that through this separation, they could control the militia forces. In late November or early December 1982, the issue of separating the army forces from those of the Islamic militia was raised more seriously, and the opposition of the prisoners was communicated to the Iraqis through the camp functionary.

The Iraqis did not tolerate this opposition and on the first or second day of December, about 35 captives ^{( who became known as the lot 35)}, including the functionary of the camp ^{(Ismail Bakhtnam)}, the functionaries of the sanatoriums, and some people who had been identified during this time,  were isolated from the rest. they shut the doors of sanatoriums, and this time they also cut off food and water. Those 35 captives were taken to a room on the top floor of the camp and  were severely   punished and tortured  so that their cries and screams could  be heard in the sanatoriums below: "The torture room was above our sanatorium. We told one of the prisoners who had a loud  bass voice to announce at the top of his voice through  the window that the Iraqis were torturing the functionaries and that the captives of other sanatoriums would have to make an immediate decision about it. Once the message reached the captives of other sanatoriums, they started chanting God is great(=Takbir). And that motto, vociferated as it was by the captives collectively, reverberated through the entire camp. They stopped the torture for a moment, but resumed it, and even kept on torturing the 35 lot for another couple of days."

A few days later, the captives were in a very critical situation. There was no water and food, and they had to answer the call of their nature right there using a bucket. The captives were forced to economize the little supplies they had: "The guys had to gather what was left to them into a bag and for the next two or three days they practically lived on the left over dough of Samun bread (3 table spoonfuls for each captive ) and a little amount of water( 3 tea spoonfuls  for each captive). "

The prisoners of each sanatorium decided to write a text in Arabic addressing the Iraqis in such a way that it was read out by one person and repeated by another four captives. According to the text, the demands of the Iraqis from the captives were unreasonable and so it was recommended to the Iraqis not to be too hard on the captives. And yet, that action too proved futile.

After three to four days, some captives blacked out due to too much weakness, and fell down on the floor of the sanatorium: "Noisily and by knocking hard on the sanatorium door, we notified the Iraqis and they came and took our unconscious friends to the infirmary. ” This continued until the 7th of December 1982, when the captives lost their patience and concluded that if they did not take an urgent action, they might lose their lives. The captives at one of the sanatoriums unlocked the door using force and violence and once they were out, they unlocked the doors of the other sanatoriums too and most of the captives rushed out.

The lack of solidarity and liaison between the sanatoriums deterred them from making a unanimous decision. Some of the more experienced prisoners did not approve of that course of action   and were concerned about the potential consequences, and one way or another, they failed to find a solution since there was no solidarity among the captives.

The Iraqis went outside the camp as they saw the crowds of captives inside. The captives also went to the kitchen and distributed the rice and water left from the first day of December among the sanatoriums.

The guys went to the kitchen and bathroom to find water, but the Iraqis had stopped the water. The luck we had was that it had rained the night before and some rain water had gathered in the small puddles in the middle of the area. The guys, who had endured thirst for days because of the love of mourning for Imam Hossein (RIP), greedily  began to drink the water gathered in the puddles.

Then, a group of two or three prisoners was picked out to negotiate with the Baathists, but they were met with the  strong opposition of Iraqis. On the 28^th of November, an attempt was made to negotiate with the Iraqis, but they still proved uncompromising.

At noon on the 28^th of November, everyone ^{(about 1,340 people)} prayed collectively in the middle of the camp. After the praying, a message with the same theme was given to the Iraqi soldiers in Arabic. After delivery of  this message, the camp door  opened and the commander in charge of Iranian prisoners in Iraq, along with the camp commander and several other officers, entered the camp's inner enclosure. The Iraqi Brigadier talked about the violation of the rules by the Iranian captives and ordered all the prisoners to return to the sanatoriums without delay.

The lack of  solidarity and organized leadership among the prisoners made some people agree to go inside the sanatorium and others tended to negotiate. As the captives were in a state of quandary and indecision, the Brigadier gave a sign and the large entrance door of the camp opened and about two hundred to three hundred Iraqi soldiers ^{(up to eight hundred in some accounts)} equipped with sticks and angles, cables and pipes materialized out of the thin air. Howling with fury and hatred they attacked the crowd with the utmost brutality and savageness. The intensity of this  invasion was so great that the captives fell to the ground one by one like the leaves of trees in autumn. Hands were broken, legs were crushed, heads were split open... They did not even show any mercy to those who had gone inside the sanatoriums... They pulled down the wall over the heads of those sitting in its shelter . 450 people were  injured and three people ^{(in some accounts four people)} were martyred: Martyr Hosseinzadeh from Tehran, Seyyed Ali Akbar Hashemi from Mashhad and an old man from Arak.

After this brutal suppression, the Iraqis gathered together everyone in the middle of the camp and, while haranguing the malcontents triumphantly, emphasized the laws and regulations and the separation of military officers from the Islamic militia members. The military officers were accommodated at the seven , eight ,nine and ten sanatoriums and the members of the Islamic militia were settled in sanatoriums one to six. Although the occurrence of this brutal clash  was reported to the representatives of the Red Cross, they took no action primarily to condemn it and  then to amend the Ba'athist approach.

Although the Ba'athists appeared to have won a victory, the spirit of resistance and trust in God and resorting to the members of the Holy Family continued to persist and the captives went on performing their religious duties as well as their rituals quite undaunted.

Also see

• Captivity and captives
• Camp
• Musel Camp 1
• Important events of Musel Camp 1
• Clash at Musel Camp
• Red Cross

Bibliography

Massoud Amirkhani