BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — "There are the bloodstains on the wall, and here it is dried on the floor," says Abu Muhanad as he walks through a torture chamber in a Baghdad mosque where more than two dozen bodies have been found.
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Two women clutch photographs of loved ones believed killed by the Mehdi Army.
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"And here, a woman’s shoes. She was a victim of the militia. We found her corpse in the grave."
Chunks of hair waft lazily across the floor in the hot Baghdad breeze.
"This was the torture room," says Muhanad, the leader of a U.S.-backed armed group that now controls the mosque.
"This is what they used for hanging," he says, pointing to a cord dangling from the ceiling. "Here is a chain we found tied to an old man’s body."
Go inside the mosque’s torture chamber »
The horrific scene at this southwestern Baghdad mosque is what officials say was the work of a Shia militia known as the Mehdi Army. Residents who live near the mosque say they could hear the victims’ screams.
The militia had been in control of the mosque, called Adib al-Jumaili, for at least a year and a half.
Watch mosque atrocities uncovered »
The neighborhood lies in an area that became one of the capital’s many sectarian fault lines when violence was at its hytrin online worst.
It’s been about three months since the Mehdi Army, loyal to radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr abandoned this mosque, as it withdrew from several strongholds across the country.
Spray painted on the walls is a chilling warning: "Spies, you will dig your own graves. Long live the Mehdi Army."
Now the mosque is under the watch of the Sons of Iraq, a local armed group that is largely financed by the Americans working alongside the Iraqi police. They are charged with trying to keep the peace in the neighborhood.
Muhanad is their leader.
"We found this chain on an old man’s corpse that we dug out of the grave," he says, gesturing to a bloodied chain on the floor. "We recovered about 22 corpses and then another five."
Only now are people able to understand the true magnitude of the Shia militia’s atrocities and the brutal laws they were enforcing on the people.
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