Iraqi children walk past British soldiers outside the University of Basra. (Lucian Perkins - The Washington Post)
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By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 7, 2003; 5:13 PM
BASRA, Iraq, April 7-They came early to the abandoned Office of Public Safety today, an imposing high-rise in the Mazlaq neighborhood that was Basra's most notorious political prison. Some came looking for clues to the fate of the missing. Others came looking for revenge.
Wamid Kadem arrived early, he said, because he wanted information on his torturer. Hani Sukany said he came to look for two cousins, even though he already knows they are dead. A 31-year-old man in black-he would not give his name-pedaled up on his rusted blue bicycle, saying he was looking for any documents that might shed light on the brother he has not seen in 11 years.
The day after Baath Party leaders fled Basra in the face of a British armored advance, scores of Iraqis swarmed onto the site, once synonymous with fear. Many said they came to look for photographs of missing loved ones. And amid the rubble of overturned filing cabinets and upended desks, they found some. One man brandished a photo of a relative who appeared bloody and lifeless, proof, he said, that the man had been tortured after he disappeared into the compound.
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