House Rights Group Told of Iraqi Atrocities

WASHINGTON —  Iraqi soldiers have turned to looting food from Kuwaiti homes and now bar citizens from hospitals, restricting medical care to military personnel, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States said today.

At the same time, Iraqis are stripping the invaded country like a stolen car, removing hospital equipment and even traffic lights and shipping them to Iraq, witnesses said at a hearing of the House Human Rights Caucus.

“Anything which is not nailed down has been taken away,” as well as some things that are nailed down, said Saud Nasir al Sabah, the ambassador. Public buildings, schools and hospitals all have been gutted, he said.

But of greater concern are continuing human rights abuses in the country, including torture or summary execution of anyone suspected of sympathizing with Kuwait’s exiled leadership, said Sabah and others who have fled the emirate.

Sabah also predicted that international sanctions imposed on Iraq after its Aug. 2 invasion will fail.

Iraq’s border with Jordan remains open to truck traffic, thwarting the trade embargo. And aircraft still land in Amman and transfer their cargo to trucks, a leak in the U.N. air embargo, the ambassador told the caucus, a loose organization of lawmakers interested in human rights issues.

“Saddam Hussein’s policy now is to sit tight . . . to strengthen his grip on Kuwait and to outlast the patience of the multinational forces,” Sabah said. “He hopes to break the alliance, and he believes time is on his side.”

Others who have escaped Kuwait since the invasion described horrors they had witnessed.

Deborah Hadi, an American who is married to a Kuwaiti, said she took a cousin who was in labor to a hospital and encountered a Kuwaiti woman, also in labor, screaming at the front door because she was not allowed to enter.

“When she continued to scream, they put a bayonet through her stomach, pinning her to the wall,” Hadi testified.