Damaged Torah scrolls from Iraq buried in NY

WEST BABYLON, N.Y. — Torah scroll fragments found amid a trove of more than 2,700 books and documents in the flooded Iraqi intelligence building basement have been buried in a religious ceremony at a suburban New York cemetery.

"This project is somewhat reflective of the new Iraq," said Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. "We are saying we would like to share and preserve the history and the heritage of the Jews, of the Christians, of the Muslims."

The artifacts were found in May 2003 after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime as American troops searched for weapons of mass destruction. The water system in the basement of the Baghdad building had been damaged by an unexploded bomb.

Burial is the method used for the disposal of sacred objects deemed unfit for use under Jewish law. Mold had inflicted much of the damage in this case, according to Maurice Shohet, president of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq....