26_September [Archives:2004/737/Press Review]

6 May 2004
Main headlines
– Integrated military sports city in Sana'a
– Seizure the biggest forgery case in Yemen
– Yemen receives 14 wanted persons from Saudi Arabia
– Regional workshop on technical and vocational education

The newspaper's political editor says in his article for this week that crimes of torture committed by the American-British coalition forces in the Iraqi prisons and jails that have been recently disclosed by media were not but little examples of the occupation scandals perpetrated against the people of Iraq. That policy has rendered complete cities and areas in Iraq to prisons and jails where large-scale torture is practiced against the people, as happened in Falluja and is happening in Najaf and Kerbala so that the Iraqi children, women and elderly people have become target and subject of collective torture and killing.
The difference is that the publication of pictures by the American CBS network on what is happening in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and the British Daily Mirror newspaper of pictures depicting practices of British soldiers in the south, drops the last part of the fig leaf behind which the American and British justifications were being hidden for launching the war on Iraq. Those pictures describe not only the morals and ethics of soldiers and officers of occupation who have directly committed those crimes but also the morals of the political leaders and military commanders who have taken the decision of waging the war and occupation without taking into consideration any humanitarian principles and values, returning humanity to the law of the jungle by disregarding the will of the international community and its legitimacy.
Does what happened in Abu Ghraib represent the freedom the Americans have voiced and told the Iraqis about and does the torturing of the prisoners represent one of the aspects of the Greater Middle East project and values of freedom and democracy promoted by the American administration for change in the region? What has happened represents a mark on the forehead of the United States and all the values it has alleged.
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