Incident on Khairallah Tulfa Street

A search for Sadr City's killing fields goes terribly wrong.

Editor's note: This is the last of a three-part series. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

By Phillip Robertson

Read more: Crash, Politics, News, Cars, Execution, Torture, Baghdad, Phillip Robertson, Iraq War, Muqtada al-Sadr

July 14, 2006 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Haidar was proud of his ride. He owned a red 1997 Nissan coupe with a six-cylinder engine, which he drove all over Baghdad listening to the same 50 Cent tape. Haidar's English was only halfway there, but he had the driving part of the job down. We took his Nissan through checkpoints, over flyways, around firefights, listening to American soldier hip-hop or Lebanese pop music. Haidar is half Americanized, one of those men who come of age during a U.S. occupation. He loved the power and style of the U.S. military, but he also had good connections with a certain militia group operating in the city. He lived in both worlds out of necessity, but didn't trade on it. I hired him on the recommendation of a colleague and friend who had spent a great deal of time in Baghdad.

Haidar's 50 Cent tape was the perfect soundtrack for the capital, now a gangland paradise brutally rewritten by explosions and the violent incarnations of greed and revenge. I found the music helped with the lethal comedy of the place. It was Haidar whom I asked to set me up with a meeting with a certain cop from Sadr City.

I wanted to talk to the cop because I wanted to find out more about a place called al-Seddeh and a mysterious figure named Abu Dereh. I'd been looking into a secret Mahdi Army court located in Sadr City, which pronounces summary sentences upon the Sunni captives who end up before it. Those same captives would later be found in shallow graves, bound and bearing signs of torture, in an empty field at the edge of Sadr City, a piece of waste ground called al-Seddeh, which Iraqis have nicknamed the "Happiness Hotel." Abu Dereh, or "Father of Shield," is a name that kept coming up in interviews about this court. One police source said he was the major figure behind the death squads and he carried out the sentences. I began to think of Abu Dereh as a dark king inside Sadr City, the face the sheiks and imams did not want exposed to the press.

The initial plan was to ride in a police convoy, take a quick look at the dumping site and then get out. In any case, a visit would have to be made with gunmen, since going alone would be impossible, and I made a decision to try the police first. An earlier police contact had stopped answering the phone, and going through Haidar and his friends was a backup plan.

On June 9, Haidar's contact told us that we had to wait for the officer, a man named Sgt. Ahmad, at a restaurant in a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood called Talbiyah. Talbiyah was under the putative control of the Mahdi Army. The cop had told Haidar, "Go to the Habaibna restaurant at 3 p.m. and call me when you get there." We were at the restaurant five minutes early. Haidar followed the instructions and called the cop and let him know we had arrived.

The Habaibna is a famous place in Baghdad. It's one of those big open-air restaurants where the men make juice drinks in the shade of the awning and the guys working the grill make decent shawarma. I've met Sadr contacts there over the past three years and have felt like it was a reasonably safe bet. The rules for the Shiite parts of town are different. I would never have waited on the street for a contact in a Sunni part of town. That would have been a death sentence.

We waited at one of the tables under the awning. Fifteen minutes went by and the cop had not arrived. It was obvious we were being watched by everyone in the place, but since we were waiting for the police, I decided to wait for a few more minutes.

We kept calling the cop, trying to find out when he was planning to arrive. He kept saying he would be there in a few minutes, a few minutes longer, I'm at the gas station, I'll be right there.

After the last of our calls, four members of the restaurant staff came over in a group and told us we had to leave. One of the restaurant men, a short man with a thin beard wearing a black shirt, said they were kicking us out was because we hadn't ordered anything, and also because we were making the other customers nervous.

After the restaurant men came over and told us to leave we walked back out in the blinding sun to the car. Instead of leaving the neighborhood, we drove to a spot about 50 feet from the Habaibna on a broad boulevard named after Saddam's beloved Nazi uncle, Khairallah Tulfa, where I could watch the arriving police patrols. A few police officers stopped and questioned us and we explained we were waiting for Sgt. Ahmad, so they led us down the street another 200 feet and told us to wait by their vehicles under a large shade tree. "The Habaibna is a bad place, you should come with us," one cop said and we followed them.

Next page: Sgt. Ahmad starts behaving very strangely