Iraqi activist Houzan Mahmoud is too young to remember the 1963 CIA-backed coup against Abdel Karim Kassem.

Five years earlier General Kassem had ousted the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy and retrieved land and oil from the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company.

During the overthrow tens of thousands of communists, along with much of Iraq's democratic-minded educated elite, were dragged out of their homes and shot in the streets. Their "crime" had been to support a leader who was on good terms with the Soviet Union.