Arab world outraged by abuse of Iraqi prisoners

Outrage flashed across the Middle East as TV stations showed graphic images of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by smiling US military police.

US President George Bush condemned the mistreatment, saying he shared “a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated”.

The photographs, shown on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, included pictures of prisoners naked except for the hoods that covered their heads. They were first broadcast on Wednesday on CBS television and have led to charges against six US 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 US soldiers standing near the prisoners hammed it up for the camera.

Meanwhile, an investigation was getting under way today into allegations that British troops in Iraq beat and abused an Arab detainee.

Pictures published in the Daily Mirror newspaper appear to show soldiers striking the hooded man with rifle butts, pointing a gun at his head and urinating on him.

He was reportedly threatened with execution during an eight-hour ordeal after being picked up for suspected theft in British-administered southern Iraq.

The soldiers told the paper that the unnamed captive, against whom no charges were brought, was driven away and dumped from the back of a moving vehicle following his ordeal. It was not known whether he survived.

The Ministry of Defence last night confirmed that, prior to the latest allegations, British troops had already been investigated over a total of 10 claims of torture and cruelty towards prisoners.

Five inquiries are ongoing, including one in which soldiers of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment have been questioned about the alleged killing of an Iraqi man.

Responding to the allegations of abuse by US soldiers, President Bush said the mistreatment of prisoners “does not reflect the nature of the American people. That’s not the way we do things in America. I didn’t like it one bit”.

But many in the Middle East saw the mistreatment as the latest example of American disregard for Arabs.

“They were ugly images. Is this the way the Americans treat prisoners?” asked Ahmad Taher, 24, a student at Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University. “Americans claim that they respect freedom and democracy – but only in their country.”

Last month, the US Army announced that six members of the 800th Military Police Brigade faced court martial for allegedly abusing about 20 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The charges included dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another person.

Their boss, US Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and at least seven others have been “suspended” from their duties at Abu Ghraib prison.

In Baghdad, US military spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, Major General Geoffrey Miller, was being sent to Iraq to take over the coalition detention facilities.

General Kimmitt said the Army is taking “very aggressive steps” to minimise the chances of such acts happening again, and ”we are also taking a hard look at interrogation practices”.

The photos, taken last year, were inflammatory in an Arab world already angry at the US occupation of Iraq. Arabs consider public nudity dishonourable.

“I was disgusted and angered by those humiliating pictures,” Egyptian insurance agent Omar Boghdady said. “The scenes were really ugly.”

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 the wires were not really connected to a power supply.

Bathsheba Crocker, an expert on Iraqi reconstruction at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the images are likely to “fuel the feeling of anti-American, anti-occupation sentiment among Iraqis”.

She said: “It doesn’t help a situation in which the United States is already viewed very badly. From a public relations perspective, it is yet another image for Arabs to add to pictures of civilians being killed in Fallujah.”

Abu Ghraib was the most notorious of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s detention centres. Its jailers are alleged to have tortured and killed thousands of Iraqis.

“This will increase the sense of dissatisfaction among Iraqis toward the Americans,” said a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Mahmoud Othman. “The resistance people will try to make use of such painful incidents.”

He added: “The Saddam era was full of executions and torture, and we want the new Iraq to be clean of such images.”

Any investigation into the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners should include not only the soldiers involved, but also their superiors, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The brazenness with which these soldiers conducted themselves … suggests they felt they had nothing to hide from their superiors,” said Kenneth Roth, the group’s executive director.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed “what appears to be a clear determination on the part of the US military to bring those responsible to justice”, spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

Amnesty International warned that the evidence of prisoner abuse “will exacerbate an already fragile situation”.