Despite his hardline conservatism, Cheney became isolated from Republican leadership over his condemnation of President Donald Trump, whom he labeled the republic's greatest threat. His career concluded when he supported Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024, demonstrating how the Republican Party's populist shift had rejected his traditional conservatism. Heart disease affected Cheney throughout his adult life, yet he survived multiple cardiac episodes and lived years after his 2012 heart transplant, which he called "the gift of life itself," CNN reported.

On September 11, 2001, Cheney occupied the White House while Bush traveled. Witnessing the second aircraft strike New York's World Trade Center transformed him into someone committed to avenging al-Qaida's assault and imposing American authority across the Middle East. "At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act," he told CNN's John King in 2002. Operating from a fortified shelter beneath the White House, Cheney managed the traumatized nation's response, issuing the directive authorizing military forces to destroy additional hijacked jets approaching the White House or Capitol. The September 11 attacks triggered American intervention in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban, though al-Qaida commander Osama bin Laden escaped. Cheney then advocated expanding military action to Iraq and dictator Saddam Hussein, whose forces he had helped expel from Kuwait during the first Gulf conflict as President George H.W. Bush's defense chief.

The vice president's aggressive declarations regarding Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction, supposed al-Qaida connections, and intention to arm terrorists significantly established justification for the 2003 invasion. Post-conflict investigations demonstrated Cheney and fellow officials overstated or mischaracterized defective intelligence concerning capabilities Iraq ultimately lacked. Among his most discredited assertions, that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta encountered Iraqi intelligence in Prague, never received confirmation. Yet Cheney maintained in 2005 that officials operated on "the best available intelligence," and argued any claim the data was "distorted, hyped, or fabricated" remained "utterly false."

The conflicts additionally guided America down troubling avenues including "enhanced interrogations" of terrorism suspects that opponents condemned as torture, though Cheney maintained methods such as waterboarding remained appropriate. He championed detaining suspects without trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a measure critics characterized as offending fundamental American principles, according to CNN.

Cheney departed office despised by Democrats with a 31% approval rating, as measured by the Pew Research Center. Throughout his remaining years, he voiced no remorse, convinced he had performed necessary actions responding to an assault that claimed nearly 2,800 lives and initiated almost 20 years of overseas conflicts. "I would do it again in a minute," Cheney stated when confronted by a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee investigation that determined enhanced interrogation techniques as savage and ineffectual. Regarding Iraq, he informed said in 2015: "It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I believe it now," according to CNN.

During his final years, Cheney surfaced as an intense Trump opponent, despite backing him in 2016. Trump's refusal to acknowledge his 2020 electoral loss and the January 6 uprising prompted Cheney to protest publicly. His daughter, then-Representative Liz Cheney, sacrificed her Republican career to challenge Trump following his effort to reverse the election outcome. During a 2022 video for his daughter's unsuccessful primary fight, Dick Cheney stared into the camera beneath a cowboy hat and stated: "In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," adding "He is a coward. A real man wouldn't lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it. He knows it, and deep down, I think most Republicans know." Richard Bruce Cheney was born January 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska, and met his future wife Lynne Vincent in Casper, Wyoming. After struggling at Yale and receiving two drunk driving arrests, he received an ultimatum from Lynne, who had "made it clear she wasn't interested in marrying a lineman for the county," he told The New Yorker. "I buckled down and applied myself. Decided it was time to make something of myself," according to CNN.

Cheney commenced his Washington career as a Nixon aide, then became Donald Rumsfeld's deputy White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford before succeeding him in 1975. He won Wyoming's House seat in 1978, serving six terms and advancing to minority whip with an extremely conservative record. President George H. W. Bush selected him as defense secretary in 1989, calling him a "trusted friend, advisor," and he managed the 1989 Panama invasion and 1991 Operation Desert Storm. During Bill Clinton's presidency, Cheney joined Halliburton as CEO. When the younger Bush sought office, Cheney led the running mate search and ultimately joined the ticket himself. "During the process, I came to the conclusion that the selector was the best person to be selected," Bush stated in the 2020 CNN documentary "President in Waiting."

Cheney's health issues began with a 1978 heart attack at 37, followed by three more in 1984, 1988, and November 2000. He stated he'd be the "the first to step down" if unable to fulfill his duties. After a fifth heart attack in 2010, he obtained a heart pump before his 2012 transplant. Following office, Cheney wrote two memoirs and became a vocal Obama critic. Years later, he condemned his own party's reaction to the Capitol assault, returning to the Capitol with Liz Cheney on January 6, 2021's one-year commemoration. "I am deeply disappointed at the failure of many members of my party to recognize the grave nature of the January 6 attacks and the ongoing threat to our nation," he stated. Democrats welcomed the former Republican vice president, with Nancy Pelosi embracing him in a scene that illustrated how Trump's transformation of American politics made former adversaries discover shared purpose defending democracy. "It's not leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years," Cheney stated at the Capitol in 2022. He endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024 due to the "duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution," cautioning Trump "can never be trusted with power again," though Trump secured the presidency months later, CNN reported.

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When he first heard that US troops had toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraqi engineer Hazem Mohammed thought he would finally be able to find his brother, who had been shot dead and dumped in a mass grave after a failed uprising against Saddam's rule in 1991.

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It wasn't just Mohammed's hopes that were raised after the US-led invasion in March 2003. Relatives of tens of thousands of people who were killed or disappeared under the dictator believed they would soon find out the fate of lost loved ones.

Video: Reuters

Twenty years later, Mohammed, who was hit by two bullets but survived the mass killing in which his brother perished, and countless other Iraqis are still waiting for answers.

Dozens of mass graves were found, testimony to atrocities committed under Saddam's Baath Party. But work to identify victims of historic killings has been slow and partial in the chaos and conflict engulfing Iraq in the past two decades.

"When I saw how mass graves were being opened, randomly, I decided to keep the location of the grave secret until a stronger state would be in place," Mohammed said.

As exhumations dragged on, more atrocities were committed in sectarian conflict and amid the rise and fall of armed groups, such as Al Qaida and Islamic State militants, as well as Shi'ite Muslim militias.

Today Iraq has one of the highest numbers of missing persons in the world, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which says estimates of the total range up to hundreds of thousands of people.

It was another 10 years before Mohammed led a team of experts to the site where he, his brother, and others were rounded up as Saddam's troops crushed a mainly Shi'ite uprising at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. At the time, they were forced to their knees next to trenches summarily dug in the outskirts of the southern city of Najaf, and shot. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed by Saddam's forces during his rule.

The remains of 46 people were exhumed from the site, now surrounded by farms, but Mohammed's brother was never found. He believes more bodies are still there, unaccounted for.

"A country that is not dealing with its past will not be able to deal with its present or future," he said. "At the same time, I sometimes forgive the government. They have so many ... victims to deal with."

Painful progress

According to the Martyrs Foundation - a governmental body involved in identifying victims and compensating their relatives - over 260 mass graves have been unearthed so far, with dozens still closed. But resources are limited for such a huge task. In a section of the ministry of health in Baghdad, a team of about 100 people processes remains from mass graves, one site at a time. The department head Yasmine Siddiq said they have identified and matched DNA samples of around 2,000 individuals, out of about 4,500 exhumed bodies.

Lining the shelves of her storage room were remains of victims from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war - skulls, cutlery, a watch, and other items that might help identify victims. The forensic efforts are complemented by archivists studying stacks of documents from Saddam's Baath Party, which was disbanded after his overthrow, for the names of missing persons yet to be identified.

Mehdi Ibrahim, an official at the Martyrs Foundation, said that each week his team identifies about 200 new victims. The names are published on social media. So far the foundation has processed about half of the 1 million documents in its possession, just a fraction of Iraq's scattered archive. Most Baath Party-era documents are held by the government, while others were destroyed after the invasion.

Some atrocities are more quickly examined than others. According to Siddiq, massacres committed by Islamic State militants, who seized much of northern Iraq in 2014 and held it for three violent years, have been prioritized.

The highest identification rate for victims was achieved for an incident known as the Camp Speicher massacre by Islamic State, a mass shooting of army recruits. "Most families declared their missing ones and most bodies had been retrieved," Siddiq said.

The Martyrs Foundation says the killings resulted in about 2,000 martyrs, including 1,200 killed and 757 who remain missing. In Sinjar, where Islamic State committed what U.N. investigators described as genocide against Iraq's Yazidi minority, about 600 victims have been reburied, with some 150 identified.

Other disappearances remain unexplored. In Saqlawiya, a rural area near the Sunni town of Falluja, families are losing hope of discovering the fate of more than 600 men captured when the area was retaken from Islamic State by security forces. Shi'ite militiamen seeking vengeance against Islamic State rounded up Sunnis from the town of Saqlawiya, according to witnesses interviewed by Reuters in 2016, U.N. workers, Iraqi officials, and Human Rights Watch.

From her living room in Saqlawiya, furnished with just a carpet and a thin mattress, Ikhlas Talal wept as she scrolled through pictures of her husband and 13 other male relatives who disappeared in early June 2016.

'We are not a priority'

Talal did not want to describe the men in uniform who took them away, fearing retribution. But she and other women from the neighborhood have searched for their husbands, fathers, and sons for years, traveling across Iraq and contacting prisons and hospitals – all in vain.

"The Iraqi government must take all steps to locate the disappeared and to hold the perpetrators accountable," said Ahmed Benchemsi of Human Rights Watch.

The Martyrs Foundation and Iraq's Interior Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the Saqlawiya case. Abdul Kareem Al-Yasiri, a local PMF commander whose unit is based currently near Saqlawiya, denied the PMF had any role in the disappearance of people from the area in the war with IS.

"These accusations are baseless and politicized to smear our troops and we reject them," he said, adding that he believed IS was behind the disappearances. Talal is seeking to have her husband officially recognized as a martyr so she could claim a monthly pension of $850.

"We are not a priority," she said, surrounded by half a dozen children who she barely manages to feed with the assistance of local NGOs and small-scale farming. Questions remain even over the better-reported incidents. Majid Mohammed last spoke to his son, a combat medic, in June 2014 before the Camp Speicher massacre. His name was not among the hundreds of victims identified by Siddiq's team, and Mohammed remains in limbo. His wife Nadia Jasim said successive governments had failed to address the enforced disappearances.

"All Iraqi mothers' hearts are broken because of their sons who disappeared," she said. "With all the time that passed since 2003, we should have found a solution. Why are people still disappearing?"

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Command Sgt. Maj. V. serves as an Arabic instructor in the IDF's Intelligence Corps. She is responsible for teaching Arab culture and mentality as well as the Arabic language to intelligence personnel, for whom the knowledge is vital.

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According to what her comrades in her unit say, V. has become something of a legend, not only because she is admired as a teacher or because she spent a long time in an operational unit, but mostly because of her personal story. Her family was one of the last Jewish families in Iraq and finally made aliyah after years of living in fear.

Israel Hayom meets with V. on an IDF base in central Israel. She arrives in uniform and as we sit down, she takes me through her incredible story, step by step.

V. was born to a Jewish family in Iraq. At the time, Iraq's Jewish community was a shell of its former glory and only a few thousand out of a community that once numbered 120,000 remained in the country.

The Iraqi Ba'ath regime persecuted the Jews who remained and saw them as spies. A few were even hanged to death on suspicion of espionage. The authorities' behavior convinced the Jews that it was time to leave – including V.'s family. But then the ax fell.

"Saddam Hussein's regime announced that my father was a spy for Israel and he was trying to flee the country. Of course, it was a lie, but while my parents and I were at the airport and the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service, detained us for questioning, my brother and grandmother managed to make it onto the plane. My brother was seven years old. My parents and I didn't see him again for 24 years."

So V., who was four at the time, and her family were labeled as traitors in a hostile nation where only a tiny Jewish community remained.

"My father was put in prison and subjected to horrible torture. For years, he was in and out of prison. My mother would fast twice a week for him. But my father wasn't the only one who suffered from the brutality of Saddam's regime. My brother, who was only five, was also taken for questioning and abused, which left him disabled."

Even when her father was released from prison, the harassment didn't stop.

"The Mukhabarat never stopped following us, following our daily lives. My father started to work as a treasurer for the Jewish community because it was the only thing he could do. His bank account had been frozen and no one would hire him."

The family decided not to forgo their Jewish identity, but for their own safety, they chose to hide it as much as possible. One of V.'s first childhood memories was drawing shapes on a piece of paper. One was a Star of David. Her family panicked and made her promise never to do it again.

V.'s first encounter with the Hebrew language was also scary.

"I remember one time I was sitting at home with my dad and he was looking for something to listen to on the radio. Suddenly, we heard a broadcast in a language I couldn't identify and sounded very strange to me. My dad looked at me in total silence and changed the station."

"I noticed what station it was and he saw me looking. And he whispered, 'Don't you dare to look for it later. That's Hebrew. It's illegal. If they catch us, we're done for."

V. falls silent.

"You have to understand. We didn't show anyone that we were Jews. We weren't taught the language, the religion, or the customs. From age four I knew what I could say to those around me and what I couldn't. I knew we were Jewish, but I didn't really understand what that meant at that age. I only knew I wasn't a regular kid."

Leading a double life from such a young age came at a price, which was declaring loyalty to the regime. When she started elementary school, V. was recruited for the scouts, the youth movement of the Saddam regime.

Unlike youth movements in Israel, the Iraqi scouts was actual military training. V. was given a uniform, a gun, and a hefty dose of Ba'ath party propaganda.

Israel was always the enemy. "I realized that I had to prove that I was more loyal to Iraq than anyone else. That I was the most Iraqi anyone could be," V. says.

Her school studies only increased her exposure to the propaganda of the regime and put V. into a permanent dilemma.

"The brainwashing was absolute. In school, in the media, the message was always the same. If there is a situation of war or danger, our loyalty was first and foremost to Saddam and the regime. I was confused between my identity at home and the one I adopted when I was with friends at school and in the youth movement."

When V. reached high school, things only got more complicated.

"I finished elementary school without any of my childhood friends knowing I was Jewish. When I got to junior high and high school I encountered difficulties being accepted because of the lessons in religion. It was the first time I talked with my mom about religion. I asked her to stop hiding so I could show myself for who I was. She scolded me and once again there was the threat and the stories about what my father had been put through."

But this time, V. would not be deterred from revealing her true identity to her friends. She was sick of hiding.

"In the end, I decided to tell my friends I was Jewish. I prepared myself for the worst, for anti-Semitism and even violence. There was no violence, but there were anti-Semitic questions… even the blood libel about Passover matzah was brought up. I needed to explain that I was a Jew, not a monster, but in the end it went fine and made me stronger."

Although her high school friends accepted her, V. began to realize that she had no future in Iraq. The family was living in constant fear that the regime would discover that her brother was living in Israel and that her father would be taken in for interrogation again. V. secretly started to dream of making aliyah to Israel, and some Jewish girlfriends helped her.

"From a young age, I had two Jewish friends and we'd play a game that had real meaning," she says.

"We invented all sorts of written codes so in case one of us left Iraq, we could communicate freely in letters. Innocent lines like, 'What's the trendy color there now?' or 'When can you start studying in Holland?' became codes for getting visas to leave Iraq and make aliyah. That funny game eventually helped us a lot at the moment of truth."

Surprisingly, the memory sparks a need for V. to explain that while the Iraq of her childhood was a tough and frightening place, it was not hell on earth.

"It's important for me to say that alongside all the difficult things I experienced in my childhood, there were plenty of opportunities for me to develop as an individual," she says.

"I studied in schools for the upper 10%, both in elementary and high school. I got the best education the country had to offer. I was also involved in youth activities and sports. I learned to swim … from a very young age. I took part in competitions and even won second place in the youth championships."

As V. was dreaming and planning about how she would take her family and move to Israel, life went on and brought the challenges that face every teenager who wants to go onto higher education. But then the country went crazy.

V. was forced to write her matriculation exams during the Gulf War, while Iraq was paralyzed by shortages and being bombed daily.

"Saddam decided that life would go on as usual, despite the bombing. I had to find time and strength to study, even when there was no electricity or water and a serious shortage of food. The Americans were bombing at night only, and in the day I had to take care to find my family food and water. So I found myself studying by candlelight, with the booms from the American bombs in the background."

But the bombing wasn't the only distraction. During the war, the regime started to crumble and soldiers would break into homes, rob them, arrest people suspected of espionage, and abuse anyone whose loyalty could be doubted. Many women were raped and there was fear everywhere.

"But the Gulf War also gave me moments of pride," V. says.

"I remember hearing my neighbors looking for radio stations to get true reports, not the regime's lies, about what was happening at the front. The station they were looking for was Israel Radio's Arabic broadcasts. Of course, it was illegal, but people were curious to know what was happening and that was the only way to get updates."

"I had a lot of friends from Lebanon, Yemen, and Morocco and I learned their various dialects so I could show respect for them and speak their language"

Despite the shortages, the bombing, and the constant fear of being robbed or raped, V. did well on her exams and was accepted to medical school.

"Like all the Iraqi Jews, I went on to learn a profession. The university was in one of the Shiite quarters of the city and I got to know people I had never met before.

"There were a lot of Palestinian students who had gotten scholarships from the Saddam regime. They weren't noted for their sympathy toward Israel or Jews. I had a lot of friends from Lebanon, Yemen, and Morocco and I learned their various dialects so I could show respect for them and speak their language. That was how I discovered a love for studying languages."

However, the move to a different human landscape came at a price. "When they realized I was Jewish, the questions started again. This time, there was also anti-Semitism. There was a group that was planning to lynch me – to kidnap me and sell me as a sex slave," she says, still horrified.

Luckily for V., some friends who heard the group of would-be abductors talking rushed to warn her. She was forced to be careful while on campus.

"I couldn't tell my parents because they'd have forced me to drop out," she says.

After the Gulf War was over, Iraq became much less safe. V. found that she needed to be on her guard not only at university, as a Jew, but also on the streets, as a woman.

"While riding the bus home from university, a group of young guys, mostly from families that had ties to the regime, would be in cars, looking for women on the street and forcing them into their cars. Once, one of those gangs started following me after I got off the bus. They followed me home and I couldn't let them know where I lived, so I hid behind the gate and prayed they hadn't seen me. I walked around with a knife, not that it would have helped, but it helped me feel safer."

As V. was finishing her studies, the situation in Iraq continued to get worse. The combination of terrorism and the regime and total anarchy on the streets convinced her it was time to fulfill her old dream and leave.

That required her to face off against her father, who was still afraid of the regime, but V. had an ace up her sleeve. While she was still a student, intelligence officials contacted her and tried to enlist her as an agent.

"I told my dad we had a week to get out. That people were already following me and if we didn't leave, we would never be rid of them." Her father, shocked, broke down and preparations got underway.

V. reached out to her childhood friends using the same code they had developed as girls. In addition to exit permits from Iraq, she arranged visas to a third country. The regime threw up obstacles at every turn, but V. was determined and completed all the necessary procedures.

After years of hiding and fear, the family got on an old beater bus, headed for the border. Other than $200, a few family photos, and V.'s parents' ketubah, they were carrying only a few small suitcases into an unclear future.

When they reached the border crossing, all the old nightmares came back. The men and the women were separated, and V. was questioned at length by an officer who had an interest in her that went beyond his professional duties.

"I told him I was on my way to meet my fiancé, and it kind of cooled him down," she says.

"We were the last Jews to make aliyah from Iraq and it was really exciting for everyone. It turned out they had been waiting for us, and we didn't know it"

But that wasn't the end.

"I was brought into an interrogation room for women, where three female officers from the Iraqi intelligence service questioned me. I had my parents' ketubah, and if they'd found it, it would have been the end. Jews were synonymous with spies in the eyes of the Iraqi intelligence. Luckily, they let me undress myself and didn't check [my clothes]."

Exhausted and knees trembling, V. left the border crossing station. She and her mother boarded a bus that was to take them across the border, but slowly she realized that her father and brother were still at the border station. The driver wanted to close the door and leave ("Let them catch the next bus," he spat at V.).

"I pictured a repeat of the separation from my brother. Without thinking, I put my foot on the brakes and told the driver, 'You aren't moving until my dad and brother get here.'"

A few minutes later the men left the border station and the family crossed the Iraqi border into freedom.

The family's arrival at the third country didn't guarantee anything. An influx of refugees was forcing the government to insist on short-term visas and deport many of the new arrivals back to Iraq, even those who entered legally. V. and her family were worried and prepared themselves for the worst. They were in a foreign country, without anything to call their own.

"I contacted my friend who helped us leave Iraq. I told her we had no money and were afraid they would deport us and we had no idea how to get to Israel. She told me not to worry, not about money and not about making it to Israel. She said we should enjoy our 'vacation' and she would take care of everything."

A few days later, the friend contacted V. and told her to come to a certain hotel, but explained nothing.

"The man waiting for us was an Israeli, who took us into Israel. I couldn't believe it was such a short trip. It felt like I was on a different planet."

Thus, after two decades of suffering, hiding, and fear, V. found herself in an immigrant absorption center in Mevaseret Zion, outside Jerusalem. Suddenly, she realized that her family's arrival in Israel had been an unusual event.

"The people at the absorption center seemed really excited," she remembers, also moved.

"I didn't understand why – we were just civilians who had arrived from Iraq. It was really lucky I spoke English, so I could talk with everyone there. I turned out we were sort of famous. We were the last Jews to make aliyah from Iraq and it was really exciting for everyone. It turned out they had been waiting for us, and we didn't know it."

V. jumped right in the deep end. She started studying Hebrew even before her formal ulpan classes began, and after a few weeks in ulpan asked her teacher to move her to a more advanced group. She was told it would take her at least three months before she'd be able to speak Hebrew, but V. could speak fluently in less than two.

Not long after, she received a phone call from the IDF's Intelligence Corps, and it frightened her. In Iraq, calls from the intelligence services were not good things, and the painful memories of her father and brother were burned into her consciousness.

"They calmed me down. They told me they wanted to offer me a job." That was how V. found herself teaching Arabic as a civilian employee of the IDF while also working to get her Iraqi university degree recognized in Israel.

After some hesitation, V. decided that the army was the place for her. Not only would she continue to work for the army, she would enlist as a soldier and serve in an operational unit.

After some time with that unit, V. returned to the Intelligence Corps, this time as an NCO. When she speaks about her army service, she seems to be speaking from a deep sense of commitment and pride.

"It makes me happy that I can give the soldiers knowledge of the [Arabic] language as a key to their service," she says. "The soldiers listen to me, they're spellbound, by my personal story as well as the language, the different dialects, the nuances and the culture the language expresses. I'm happy to tell them where I come from, because it's a story that's relevant for them."

Even after many years in Israel, V.'s memories from Iraq still define her sense of mission.

"Because I grew up in a country that treats its people with brutality, especially – but not only – Jews, I understand the importance of our country. I discovered that what I took with me, both in terms of the mentality and my familiarity with the Arab world, is worth a lot. I discovered that I can contribute and offer something that very few other people in Israel can. I am guided by a sense of obligation. I must pass my knowledge onto the soldiers."

If one reads between the lines, it's also possible to sense a smidgen of love for the country, the culture, and the food of her childhood.

"There is something about the essence of Iraq that never leaves me," V. admits. "The wide river, the water, the desert, the alleyways and childhood games, the food. I especially remember the Iraqi grilled fish, the 'samak masgouf,' a river fish that's prepared over an open fire. In spite of everything I went through, I won't forget Iraq. It's still in my blood."

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The justices declined to hear an appeal by Amir Shabo, who was detained in 2017 during a sweep targeting hundreds of Iraqi immigrants who had prior criminal convictions and had been ordered deported as part of by U.S. President Donald Trump's push to intensify immigration enforcement. Shabo, 51, had challenged a lower court ruling that went against him.

Shabo, a married father of two who lives in Sterling Heights, Michigan, fled Iraq with his family and immigrated to the United States in 1985, becoming a legal permanent resident. Shabo was convicted of cocaine possession in 1992 and served five years in prison.

In deportation proceedings at the time, Shabo argued he would be targeted for persecution in predominantly Muslim Iraq as a member of the Chaldean Christian minority and because he and his brother had refused to enlist to fight for then-President Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government in 1989.

U.S. and international law prohibit deporting people if they are likely to be tortured. However, federal immigration law typically prevents courts from reviewing the deportation of non-U.S. citizens who have committed serious crimes.

At issue was whether federal appeals courts can second guess immigration officials' determinations about the potential for torture in cases involving non-citizens with criminal records.

Immigration officials had said that because of Shabo's criminal conviction his expulsion could not be halted. But Iraq at that time was not issuing travel documents, and Shabo was allowed to remain in the United States.

Iraq in 2017 agreed to accept its citizens deported from the United States as part of a deal to remove the country from Trump's travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries.

Anticipating being detained, Shabo asked officials to reopen his deportation case, again arguing that he would be subject to torture, noting the presence of the Islamic State in Iraq. But the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body within the Justice Department, disagreed.

The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that under immigration law it did not have jurisdiction to review the board's decision.

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The grave, found in the desert about 170 km (110 miles) west of the city of Samawa, contained the remains of dozens of Kurds made to "disappear" by Saddam's forces, Salih's office said.

They were among up to 180,000 people who may have been killed during Saddam's "Anfal" campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s when chemical gas was used, villages were razed and thousands of Kurds were forced into camps.

"He killed them because they did not accept the continuation of this regime, because they wanted to live a free and dignified life," Salih, a Kurd, told a news conference at the grave site.

"He brought them to Samawa to bury them but our people in Samawa embraced them," Salih added. Iraq's southern provinces are predominantly inhabited by Shiite Arabs, who also suffered oppression and mass killings under Saddam, a Sunni Arab.

"The new Iraq must never forget these crimes that were committed against Iraqi people from all groups," he said.

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