The blackest hearts: War crimes in Iraq

On 12 March 2006, Abu Muhammad heard a knock on his door. He lived in a village just outside Yusufiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and warily he headed towards the window–since the invasion, you never knew who it might be. It was a neighbour of his cousin and her husband, who lived in a nearby hamlet. "You must come," the man said. "Something has happened at your cousin's house, something terrible." Pulling into the driveway, Abu Muhammad saw his cousin's 11- and nine-year-old boys wailing. They had just returned home from school. Smoke was billowing from one of the windows. Abu Muhammad circled the house, looking in the windows. His cousin Fakhriah, her husband Qassim and their six-year-old daughter Hadeel had all been shot. Their daughter Abeer, 14, was naked from the waist down. Her body was still smoking; her entire upper torso had been scorched, much of it burnt down to ash. Her chest and face were gone. "Come," Abu Muhammad said to the boys. "Come with me." He dropped them with his wife and drove to a nearby traffic control point, TCP1.