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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Khamis Brigade Shed Massacre: Victims 16's "Collar"

March 7, 2012

To tease out any comments people might have, I'll highlight this in its own post. This might be our smoking gun, or smoking RPG fragment... the mysterious metal parts sported byvictim #16 (re-numbered-was #14)

It's possibly just some debris benetah him his skeleton fell down amidst. But it really looks quite intimate with his upper left body, as if it had been forced to make space for the thing back when he was alive. Note the broken, off-angle left arm and shoulder. It's a semi-circular metal band with some additional elements attached, seeming stuck in the skeleton at its distrupted shoulder. Orange in hue, oxidized, (iron?). Possibly the remains of some kind of rocket or artillery? A piece of machinery or a complex tool jammed into his heart?


(picture refs, see charred victims imagery)

Or is it from one of the grenades the guards used? Maybe it blew up part of the door, curled it up, and blew it into this poor suspected disloyalist.

It's going in the shed massacre report, so how should it be put?

7 comments:

  1. I had a look at the photos of Shawn Baldwin and Ciro Fusco which you don't seem to catalogue in the Charred image page, but it seems they missed the collar. Simlarly,I don't think it is in the Oerlimans / Daniels photos (also uncatalogued on the page).
    The latter have some nice doorway lighting shots, plus a close up of the "bound" feet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I hadn't seen those at all yet that I noted, and I will be adding them. I've been slow here, but the skeletons are in my mind now, so this is most helpful. Some views help finally sort out the southeast corner, maybe, and a better count. I had just written it off as "d," unclear, maybe 4-6 bodies.

      Corbis 42-29340470 shows body 14, collar probably there, but not clear at preview res.
      42-29436893 same basic view
      42-29327603 again not clear
      will check.

      It's partly visible in 42-29327567, a useful view

      42-29327600 -that doesn't look familiar at all. I guess it's the SE corner.

      Other images I was reviewing suggest there's a second sort of coil to this metal thing, beneath it. I'll see about noting that next time I see it.

      Delete
  2. At 1.01 in the Second Sky video there seems to be a shot of a curved metal plate between two cracked skulls.

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    1. Notseeing it. There's a rib left of center, some charred bone, perhaps skull top, amidst crud right of center.

      I had a moment where I decided this metal chunk under study was just ribs. The color is actually about right for that. But dang, the RT video really makes it look like metal plate work.

      But this, I'd need help seeing it.

      Delete
    2. Perhaps it's a lone rib then? (spare rib)

      Delete
  3. Worth re-reading the Kim Sengupta piece in the Independent, 10 September 2011: Amr Dau Algala was picking through the ashes with a stick when he came across the charred and broken bones. A little later he found the buckle. "Only my brother was wearing a belt in our group. This looks like my brother's," he whispered, looking down at the twisted piece of metal.

    For the record, he mentions Qasr bin Ghashir:
    Abdul Birbash was sitting outside the brigade compound, at Gasar ben Ghasir, a suburb of Tripoli, in an old Toyota car clutching photocopied images of his brother, Abdullah, 31, cousin Hasaib, 24, and 26-year-old Salah Nouer, a neighbour. They had disappeared returning from the town of Zintan on the night of 23 August.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. felix: Worth re-reading the Kim Sengupta piece in the Independent, 10 September 2011 :

      coils of orange and green rope on the floor …

      The threat proved to be real the following morning when the murders began.

      "Three guards came to the doorway and started firing, they took turns to fire, then there were loud bangs.

      Delete

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