At about PM on July 12, a group of well-dressed young men carrying silenced pistols arrived at an apartment complex in Baghdad's Eastern Zayouna neighborhood. But they weren't INIS. And instead of hunting terrorists, the smart young men went to a brothel housed in a sun-faded building nearby then murdered the 29 women — all suspected prostitutes — and between three and five men they found inside. The slaughter took just 10 minutes. When they'd finished, they went back to the generator building, asked for the security camera footage, and calmly apologized for any inconvenience they had caused.
The massacre was widely reported, but details have been scant. Even now, more than two weeks later, there are police checkpoints on the way to the area and members of the press have been turned away while attempting to reach the scene. VICE News was recently able to reach the complex and speak to residents and eyewitnesses. All of their names have been withheld to protect against reprisals. Shortly after the gunmen left, a young man in a yellow Iranian-made Saipa taxi pulled up outside the generator building.
The agent had been called by a lookout in the neighborhood who had seen the men approaching; suspecting trouble, he'd also called the police. Two officers arrived shortly afterward and made their way to the brothel accompanied by a neighbor. The three men knocked on the door, then shouted, asking if anyone was still alive. When they heard someone moving, they broke in. The scene was horrifying. A series of graphic pictures taken minutes later and distributed online show that a number of the women were killed as a group in a living room, and several more in a bathroom.
The dead men had their hands cuffed behind their backs. Baghdad's Sunnis are living in fear amid escalated violence. Read more here. The resident who was with the police when they broke into the apartment said that he was familiar with all of the women and sometimes did odd jobs around the brothel for them. Each one of them had a tragedy in her past.
It was him that took the pictures. Two who had been married to the pimp running the brothel and died holding onto each other amid a pile of bodies slumped in front of an armchair and television. Another who was shot through the eye. One who was alone on a bed, the bulge of a pregnant belly clearly visible. The brothel, neighbors said, had been around for about three years and generally operated under the protection of local security forces; it even supplied women to government officials. It became bigger and bigger, it was like a whole company.
