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posted February 16, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

New Abu Ghraib pictures anger Arab nations

Bush administration slams Australian TV network for airing new photos of US abuses at Baghdad prison.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Arab nations said Thursday that new photos of US troops abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib would only fuel the fury among many already angry over the publication of cartoons that depicted the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. Reuters reports that the photos were headline news all over the Arab world the day after they were broadcast on the Australian SBS network work show "Dateline."

"This is awful because I always look up to the British and Americans as the best in the world," said Kuwaiti firefighter Khalil al-Amir. "They are supposed to be more civilised. But when I see something like this it makes me think twice." ...
"Abu Ghraib II: worse than ever," said Dubai tabloid 7Days. "We are aware that the images will cause much anger at this time. However, we believe strongly they must be published."

Prominent Syrian human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni said the new photos undermine US credibility in the region, even if they are three years old. "The interest of the United States lies in promoting democracy and human rights in Syria. The pictures make the US calls sound hollow," he told Reuters.

The new Abu Ghraib photos also come just a week after a British newspaper printed photos from a video of British troops beating Iraqi youths in Basra two years ago.


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This is the not the first time the Australian "Dateline" show has made headlines around the world. Last October it broadcast images of US soldiers burning the corpses of two Taliban fighters in "a bid to taunt Islamic militants." The images infuriated Muslims, particularly in Afghanistan, as cremation is forbidden in Islam. The Afghan government denounced the incident.

The Australian reports that the Bush administration criticized SBS's decision to air the photos, saying it would only make a bad situation worse. But a spokesman for the State Department did admit that the photos illustrated the "reprehensible conduct" of some members of the US military.

"It's unfortunate, though, that the photographs are continuing to come out because I think it simply fans the flames at a time when sentiments on these issues are raw around the world," [John Bellinger, a legal adviser at the US State Department] said of the images aired on Wednesday night on SBS's Dateline. "But the photographs show conduct that is absolutely disgusting."

Agence France-Press reports many Iraqis were angered and shocked by the photos, but many Iraqi newspapers chose not to run them because they would humiliate the Iraqis shown in the pictures. ABC News reports the Iraqi government condemned the new photos, but also noted that those responsible had already been punished.

Iraq's acting human rights minister, Nermine Othman, said she was "horrified" by the pictures and would study whether any action could be taken against those responsible, even though some offenders have been imprisoned.
"There will be two kinds of reactions from Iraqis," she told The Associated Press. "One will be anger and others will feel sorry that they (SBS) didn't give them to the Iraqi government to investigate. Why use them? Why show them? We have had enough suffering and we don't want any more.

USAToday reports that the online magazine Salon.com says that it has obtained over 1,000 photos of abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib in 2003. Salon says it obtained the photos from someone who had served at Abu Ghraib.

The materials it has obtained, Salon says, may be identical to the information that human rights and civil liberties groups have been seeking from the Defense Department in court proceedings. The Pentagon has been fighting those legal efforts, arguing that release of the evidence could violate the prisoners' rights to privacy, endanger US troops in Iraq and incite violence in the Muslim world. After the scandal was first made public in 2004, there were violent protests in many Muslim nations.

The Guardian's Newsblog looks at the reasons given by the SBS network and Salon to publish some of the photos, and the decision by others like The Washington Post (which also has more Abu Ghraib photos) not to publish them.

Finally, Zuhair al-Chalabi, Iraqi human rights minister, told Reuters that the Iraqi government was very concerned about the treatment of prisoners at the facility and that the US and British forces should hand them over.