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** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** Visit the Dahr Jamail Iraq website http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
** Website by http://jeffpflueger.com **


Outrage Spreads over New Images

*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed

*BASRA, Feb 16 (IPS) - New footage of British soldiers beating up young
Iraqi men in Amarah city in 2003, and the release of more photographs of
atrocities by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison
has spread outrage across Iraq.*

The timing of the new images is potent, in the wake of violence
spreading through Iraq and much of the Muslim world over cartoons of
Prophet Mohammed carried by a Danish newspaper and then other European
publications.

"We in Basra have decided not to cooperate in any way with the British
troops," 43 year-old food merchant Ali Shehab Najim told IPS. "These
occupiers of Basra are invaders and we will not sell them any of their
requirements."

Najim added, "None of us will work with them any longer either. My
cousin used to work with them inside their base, but not any more. He
refuses to go to work, and we have decided to show our contempt for them
in every way possible."

Najim said people are particularly angry over the Danish military
presence in Iraq.

He said he had first accepted the presence of occupation forces, but now
"I think it's about time to tell them we do not respect them since they
are behaving in a very bad way."

After footage of British troops beating young Iraqis with fists and
batons was aired earlier, the Governorate of Basra announced it has
severed ties to the British military. This included cancellation of
joint security patrols.

"We condemn any of those actions by British and American troops in
torturing our young people," former head city councillor of Basra
governorate Qasim Atta Al-Joubori told IPS.

"Iraqis suffered a lot during the past 35 years, but now they are
tortured by foreigners who invaded our country," said Al-Joubori, who
was a city councillor in Basra for 40 years. "We can't accept having
them any more."

Far from cooperating, people in Basra are now prepared to fight the
occupation forces, he said. "What these beatings and torture show is
that the occupiers are both assaulting and insulting all of the Iraqi
people."

Similar views are being echoed around Basra, a relatively quieter area
in the south under charge of British troops.

"We are looking to the day we see those bastards out of our country," 55
year-old factory owner Abdullah Ibraheem told IPS. "Now they are
torturing the citizens of Basra, Baghdad and Amarah, so they have not
only lost the support of the Iraqi Sunnis but the Shias in this country
as well."

He said most Iraqis know someone who has been in a military detention
centre, but said the new video footage and photographic evidence of
torture have "demolished whatever credibility may have remained for the
occupiers."

The Australian television network Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)
aired previously unpublished video footage and photographs Wednesday of
abuse of Iraqis by U.S. soldiers inside the infamous Abu Ghraib prison
in 2003.

The images are similar to those published in 2004 that led to furore
across the Middle East. But many of the new images show a brutality and
extent of sexual humiliation that many news outlets found too shocking
to carry.

The American Civil Liberties Union had obtained the photographs from the
U.S. government under a Freedom of Information request, but its members
said they were not aware how the SBS came to air its new footage and the
photographs.

There could be yet more photographs to come. "I believe major newspapers
in the U.S. like the Washington Post have scores more photos which are
evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib, but they won't publish them due to
pressure from the U.S. government," an attorney at the Centre for
Constitutional Rights in New York City told IPS.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters, "The
abuses at Abu Ghraib have been fully investigated." He added, "When
there have been abuses, this department has acted upon them promptly,
investigated them thoroughly and where appropriate prosecuted individuals."

He said the Pentagon believes that releasing of the new images would
trigger greater violence, and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq.

_______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
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