Saddam Hussein kept secret torture chamber in the basement of Iraqi mission in New York
Saddam’s brutal henchmen would capture Iraqis living in the US for up to 15 days and torture them by pulling out their fingernails
SADDAM Hussein kept a secret torture chamber in the basement of the Iraqi mission in New York.
The tyrannical dictator ordered the installation of a "detention room" in the five story townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Saddam’s brutal henchmen would capture Iraqis living in the US for up to 15 days and torture them by pulling out their fingernails.
If they did not cooperate they were executed and shipped back to Baghdad in Customs-exempt boxes.
According to two Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity: "They just put (the body) in a diplomatic box and it can just be shipped. This is diplomatic – nobody has the authority to examine it or open it".
The Upper East Side is one of the wealthiest areas of Manhattan and the Iraqi Mission sits right across East 79th St from the home of the city’s billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
To keep the torture basement a secret Saddam’s henchmen, known as the Mukhabarat blacked out a skylight in the roof of the building so that US Air Force satellites couldn’t see in.
They also monitored US spies who were trying to monitor them using wiretap surveillance from a car parked across the street, the New York Post reported.
The Mukhabarat waited for Iraqis living in America to come in for official business then brought them down to the basement to act as leverage to get their relatives back home to cooperate with the regime.
During the torture they used copper wire, rubber hoses and wooden planks. They would also beat the prisoners within an inch of their deaths.
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One official said: "It was a dark room. The doors were reinforced in a way that nobody could break in or out. You didn’t need to soundproof it".
The other official said: "You’re not going to hear someone screaming down there’.
The first room in the basement was the office for the agents, who carried 9mm pistols and had several Kalashnikov rifles on the premises.
The second room was the communications centre which had an encrypted system to send messages to Baghdad.
The torture chamber was in the third room which was being a huge metal door with steel bars across it.
The detention room was raided in 2003 by federal investigators following Saddam’s fall from power in Iraq. They took away any evidence of wrongdoing but it was never made public until now.
Saddam was executed in 2006 after being found hiding in his underwear in a hole in the ground in Iraq.
The detention room in the Iraqi Mission was converted into a kitchenette during a £110,000 renovation in 2014.
Whilst he was in charge of Iraq, Saddam presided over mass killings of his own people, including by chemical weapons.
At least 200,000 people are said to have been killed or ‘disappeared’ by Saddam’s Secret Police force but many more died as a result of his wars and brutality.