The first mention of the shredder came at a meeting on 12 March 2003, when James Mahon addressed the British House of Commons after returning from research in northern Iraq.
[4] Later she would add that it was believed to be housed in Abu Ghraib prison, and spoke with an unidentified person who claimed the shredders were dismantled "just before the military got there".
In William Shawcross' 2003 book Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq, he claimed that Saddam Hussein "fed people into huge shredders, feet first to prolong the agony".
[6] The Sun's political editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote in February 2004 that "Public opinion swung behind Tony Blair as voters learned how Saddam fed dissidents feet first into industrial shredders.
"[3] No further evidence for the existence of the shredder has ever been published, though a witness named Ahmed Hassan Mohammed at Saddam's trial in December 2005 claimed to have seen it.
Johann Hari, a British supporter of the Iraq war, quoted Joseph saying the trip "shocked me back to reality" in a column in The Independent published on 26 March 2003.
"[10][11] Human shield activists speculated that if Joseph had gone to Iraq he was likely "motivated by his campaign for 'Assyrian Independence' rather than the welfare of the Iraqi people in the face of an invasion."