Hundreds of bereaved Iraqis staged a symbolic funeral today for relatives secretly executed by Saddam Hussein's death squads more than 20 years ago.
Beating their chests to Shi'ite slogans, weeping women clad in black, men and children marched through the main street of Karadah, a mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood in central Baghdad.
Some mourners carried an empty coffin draped in an Iraqi flag and covered with photos of executed men, while others carried banners calling for revenge for their death.
"Saddam is the enemy of God," chanted more than 600 people, who carried banners that read "We will avenge every drop of blood of every martyr", and "shame and disgrace for all those who helped the gang of tyrants".
Some mourners carried portraits of men who were executed by Saddam's agents, most of them in their early 20s and including Muslim clerics in black turbines and robes.
They also carried portraits of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq's biggest Shi'ite Muslim group who returned home yesterday after 23 years in exile.
Most of the people who took part in the funeral said they did not find the names of relatives in lists recently published by some newspapers or by the newly founded Free Prisoners Society.
"They took my four sons and my husband in 1979," said Mr Fatima Ali Mahmoud (66) as she burst in tears. "They even took the house and the furniture."
She said that security agents also arrested the husbands of her three daughters and 18 other relatives.