Michelle May

Amna Suraka, which means Red Security in Kurdish, is Iraq’s first war crimes museum. It’s an imposing compound made of reddish concrete which was once one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious torture centers and prisons. Countless people died and disappeared here, including women and children.

The rooms of the prison are now set up to illustrate what horrific crimes happened to those in captivity. Plaster models in some of the rooms depict exact methods of torture. In some of the cells the graffiti from prisoners is still in tact. In one solitary confinement cell graffiti birds and flowers are still on the wall. In 1991 the Kurdish Pershmega army defeated Hussein’s army liberating the torture center, but for many it was too late.

In another building in the compound, the former offices of Hussein and his security forces have been turned into a Kurdish museum that displays vibrant textiles, rugs and jewelry of the very culture that Hussein tried to annihilate. Another door leads to an unexpected artistically wavy hallway decorated with 182,000 shards of mirror and over 5000 small white lights on the ceiling (video above); a shard of mirror for every person who perished during Hussein’s Anfal campaign, and a light for each village that Hussein destroyed during his rule. Beauty in a place where only misery and death had existed.

Tags: American military, Amna Suraka, Human Rights, Iraq, Iraq War, Kurdistan, Prison, Saddam Hussein, Torture, Travel.