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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Photos of prisoner abuse enrage Arabs
(Associated Press, April 30, 2004)
Arabs expressed outrage at graphic photographs shown on TV screens today across the Middle East of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by smiling U.S. military police. . . . The images shown on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channels were first broadcast Wednesday on CBS' "60 Minutes II" and have led to charges against six U.S. soldiers. . . . The Arab TV stations led news bulletins with the photos of hooded prisoners piled on top of each other in a human pyramid and simulating sex acts, with their genitals blurred. Two U.S. soldiers standing near the prisoners hammed it up for the camera. . . . World leaders and ordinary Arabs condemned the images. . . . The photos were taken last year at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad. . . . One of the photos showed a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. CBS reported the prisoner was told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted, although in reality the wires were not connected to a power supply. . . . Al-Jazeera introduced the pictures by saying they showed the "immoral practices" of Iraq's occupation forces. . . . "This will increase the sense of dissatisfaction among Iraqis toward the Americans," said a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman. "The resistance people will try to make use of such painful incidents." . . . The Abu Ghraib prison was the most notorious of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's detention centers. Its jailers are alleged to have tortured and killed thousands of Iraqis, and a cemetery outside has dozens of unmarked graves. . . . "The Saddam era was full of executions and torture, and we want the new Iraq to be clean of such images," Othman said. . . . U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "was deeply disturbed by the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being mistreated and humiliated by their guards," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Friday. . . . Al-Arabiya's reporter said the pictures posed the question of how many more abuses were occurring without coming to public light. . . . Amnesty International issued a statement from its London headquarters today saying its research indicated that the abuse "is not an isolated incident." . . . Yemeni human rights activist Mustafa Rageh agreed. . . . "I believe lots of similar scenes are still hidden, and what we have seen today is just a sample," Rageh said. "Such hideous scenes are severely violating human rights' basic principles." . . . Amnesty warned that the evidence of torture "will exacerbate an already fragile situation. . . . "The prison was notorious under Saddam Hussein," it said. "It should not be allowed to become so again."

posted by Lorenzo 11:42 AM