Outrage Spreads over New Images

Outrage Spreads over New Images
*Inter Press Service*
Dahr Jamail and Arkan Hamed*

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

*The timing of the new images is potent, in the wake of violencespreading through Iraq and much of the Muslim world over cartoons ofProphet 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 andbatons was aired earlier, the Governorate of Basra announced it hassevered ties to the British military.

This included cancellation of joint security patrols."We condemn any of those actions by British and American troops intorturing 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 havingthem any more."Far from cooperating, people in Basra are now prepared to fight theoccupation forces, he said. "What these beatings and torture show isthat 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 aretorturing the citizens of Basra, Baghdad and Amarah, so they have notonly lost the support of the Iraqi Sunnis but the Shias in this countryas well."He said most Iraqis know someone who has been in a military detention centre, but said the new video footage and photographic evidence oftorture 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 furoreacross the Middle East. But many of the new images show a brutality andextent 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 memberssaid they were not aware how the SBS came to air its new footage and thephotographs.There could be yet more photographs to come. "I believe major newspapersin the U.S. like the Washington Post have scores more photos which areevidence of torture at Abu Ghraib, but they won't publish them due topressure 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 wouldtrigger greater violence, and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq.