Al-Thawry [Archives:2004/704/Press Review]

15 Jan 2004
Main headlines:
– Interrogation of the YSP student sector at Sana'a University
– Health ministry sends AIDS patients to charlatans
– Bar Association presents al-Jifri deformities of judiciary
Under a title ''The British Troops kill Iraqis with Shoes'', columnist Hashim Abdulaziz writes an article saying that during his last Sunday visit to the British soldiers in the Iraqi city of Basra, and Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the world was being threatened by the virus of Islamic extremism. Blair=s statement was not something new and did not surprise but Tony Blair himself. This does not mean that the prime minister was frank and clear before the ''pioneers of the new soldiery in the 21st century'', as he had described the British soldiers but rather was impudent not only in the racism of his words, because extremism and terror have no race or religion, but also in the acts of the ''pioneers of the new colonialist soldiery'' that they deserved from him the risk of visiting them and praising their acts that represent the ugliest colonialist crimes in retaliation from the Iraqis.
Among the main acts reported by the media especially the British newspaper The Independent to which the Amnesty International urged its members to directly protest with the British prime minister and the demand for holding an investigation in them were the acts of torture of the Iraqi prisoners in Basra by British troops. The report mentioned that British soldiers in Basra attacked eight Iraqi young men and kicked them with shoes after their being arrested and that led to the death of one of them of the severity of kicking and that young Iraqi man was called Baha Mousa, son of an Iraqi police officer. Through its correspondent in Basra the British newspaper presented a talking picture of the ugly incident with all the meanings and indications of the Amoral message and ''humanitarian message of the British and Americans for delivering'' the Iraqis.
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