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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (5556)	5/24/2003 11:24:38 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15992

Saddam was better, say victims of peace ANTHONY BROWNE THE TIMES, LONDON KHAN BANI SAAD (Iraq), May 24. — The small dank cells with cold stone floors, tiny windows and iron bars for a door used to house criminals and the victims of Mr Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now Khan Bani Saad prison, overlooked by watchtowers and surrounded by razor wire, is filled with families who are victims, not of the war, but of the peace. Mrs Sabrir Hassan Ismael, a mother of six, held her three-year-old daughter Zahraa in the cell that is now their living room and bedroom, and cried: “Look at my family. We live in prison. We can’t buy food because we don’t have money. We have no gas to cook. We can’t sleep because it’s very hot. There are huge insects that bite us. I live without any hope.” Outside, children play in the foetid puddles, swirling dust and searing heat of the prison courtyard, where prisoners once walked in dread. Before the end of the war, Mrs Sabrir lived with her husband Mr Hassan Tahar Yassim on a farm in Khanaqin, close to the Iranian border. They are members of the Arab Saraefien. As opponents of Mr Saddam Hussein, they even welcomed the American invasion. But it is the peace, and the disintegration of Mr Saddam Hussein’s grip, that has destroyed their lives. On 11 April, Kurdish fighters entered Khanaqin, ordering all 15,000 Arabs to leave within 48 hours. The following day they returned. “They threw all our belongings out in the street, and we left,” said Mrs Sabrir’s son. After seven days of travelling, 1,500 of the tribe ended up in the abandoned prison. They are part of the rising tide of internal refugees in Iraq, forced out of their homes by the ethnic conflict that in Thursday resulted in more gunfights between Kurds and Arabs in the town of Kirkuk. Every day on Iraq’s highways, Arabs who have been forced out of their homes are drifting south hoping to find somewhere to live. Many, but not all, of the Arabs in Khanaqin had been forced to move there in 1975 from southern Iraq because they opposed Saddam’s regime. Saddam wanted to Arabise the predominantly Kurdish towns close to the Iranian border. Occupants of Khan Bani Saad prison just want somewhere they can call their own. The tribe has appealed for help to the coalition forces, but no one has visited them. They have eaten or sold almost all their animals, and have only a week’s food left. Now they hate the Americans. Mrs Sabrir’s son concludes: “We have discovered that Saddam was better than the Americans.” thestatesman.net

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (5556)	5/31/2003 2:37:05 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 15992

I hope they give these guys the maximum sentence. This is just absolutely sick and utterly uncalled for. And I congratulate Ms. Tilford for having the guts and values to call the cops over this: My horror at PoW sex abuse pics By JOHN SCOTT and MICHAEL LEA THE young mum who uncovered the Iraqi PoW sex snaps scandal said last night: “I felt sick to the stomach at those pictures.” Kelly Tilford, 22, called police after developing a film in her photo shop. The shocking pictures — revealed by The Sun yesterday — showed male Iraqis apparently forced into sexual positions by their British captors. In another a prisoner was suspended by rope from a fork-lift truck driven by a laughing Brit. Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 18, of Tamworth, Staffs, is being grilled by the Army’s top criminal investigator — amid fears the scandal is the tip of an iceberg. Disgusted Kelly said she knew she had to call police after seeing the horrific scenes in Gulf War II snaps she had just developed. Kelly said: “I immediately realised something terribly wrong had happened and something had to be done about it. “I started shaking and was panicking in case the guy came back before I could raise the alarm.” She spoke out last night as Bartlam, of the 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was in custody. Four snaps on Bartlam’s roll of 25 exposures shocked the mum-of-two. Arrested ... Gulf War soldier Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 18 ONE was apparently taken in a warehouse. It showed a man stripped at least to the waist and suspended high in the air by a rope attached to one of the forks on a fork-lift truck. More rope bound him throughout the length of his body. He was hanging horizontally and his frightened face was in close-up. A soldier driving the fork-lift truck could be seen in the background, staring at his victim and apparently laughing. ANOTHER picture showed a pair of white legs and the head of a male Iraqi. The hand of a man behind the Iraqi’s head appeared to be forcing him to perform oral sex. The Iraqi was squatting and again appeared to be at least naked to the waist. The soldier’s face was not visible. A THIRD picture showed a pair of bare backsides. One Iraqi man was on his knees on the floor with his body bent. Another was pressed behind him, tightly moulding his body like a spoon in what seemed to be a sexual position. THE FOURTH snap showed two naked Iraqis cowering on the ground as if thrown there. Kelly, who has children aged two and eight months, said Fusilier Bartlam called at the Max Spielmann photo shop where she works in Tamworth, Staffs, on Wednesday. The young soldier, who was home on leave after the war, left a roll of film to be developed into 7in x 5in prints within an hour. She went on: “I went to the mini-lab. As you put the film through, you are meant to check the pictures on a screen to ensure they are printed properly. “You have never got time to watch all of them, because you are inevitably doing something else. We had been very busy. “I had already processed the films of one or two soldiers back from Iraq and had told them, ‘Congratulations, well done,’ when they came to collect their photos. Fork-lift horror ... artist's impression of Iraqi PoW's ordeal "But when I started cutting the negatives on this batch, I looked at one and noticed immediately that it seemed a bit strange. I took a closer look. “At first appearance, it had seemed like soldiers having a laugh. “Then I realised it was a half-naked Iraqi being hauled high into the air by a forklift truck while bound hand and foot. “I saw the look on his face. He was petrified. “I will never forget that terrible stare. I immediately thought, ‘That’s not right’. “Then I saw some sexual pictures. One looked like an Iraqi PoW being forced to give a soldier oral sex. I think the Iraqi was naked — you could just see the top half of him and the bottom half of the soldier. “There was also a close-up of the naked backsides of two Iraqis, as if they were simulating anal sex. “Another shot showed two Iraqis lying naked on the ground as if they had just been thrown there. There didn’t seem anything wrong with the other photos. They were just pictures of Iraqi soldiers surrendering — the sort of thing you saw on the TV during the war.” Kelly, who has only worked at the shop for eight weeks, said: “It should have cost the guy £5.99 but he never paid for those pictures in the end. “I was worried and waited for my colleague to come back from lunch. She just took one look and said, ‘Oh my gosh — we have got to call the police’. “We phoned our area manager to tell him what we were doing. “The lad was due back any minute to collect his photos, so we agreed to tell him they were not ready because there was a problem with the machine. “He came back before the police arrived. We told him the machine was not working and it would be another half an hour. Shock ... Kelly spotted photos “As I said that he blushed — as if he knew something was wrong. He stayed in the shop 15 to 20 minutes and I could not bring myself to look at him. “I eventually said, ‘Look, we have got to get a technician out. If you want to call back’. I told him to leave his telephone number so we could call when the film was ready. “He agreed and just as he was leaving, a police sergeant arrived. Fortunately it was a detective in plain clothes, so the soldier was none the wiser. “There was nothing we could do at that stage because he had not seen the pictures. “After the detective saw them, he contacted his office and we rang the soldier to say the film was ready for collection. “When he came into the shop, the sergeant was waiting for him and called out his name. The lad said ‘Yeah’ and confessed to the copper that the pictures were his. “The officer showed him his badge and took him through to the back of the shop. He went straight away. He didn’t struggle or anything. “About half an hour later an unmarked blue car pulled up outside and they took him away. The police then came back later to take a statement from me about what I saw. “The lad was in some of the pictures, but not all of them. “I don’t know which photos he had taken and which had been taken of him, because some were such close-ups you could not see the faces of those involved. Kelly added: “I don’t feel guilty about calling in the police. I know people who have been fighting in Iraq. “I am as proud as anybody of what our forces did out there — but there are rules. thesun.co.uk