Arabs outraged by photos of U.S. troops humiliating Iraqi prisoners

Saturday, May 1st 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ Images of smiling U.S. military police humiliating Iraqi prisoners appeared in newspapers around the Middle East on Saturday, angering Arabs who condemned the United States as a champion of rights only for Americans.

Egypt's Akhbar el-Yom newspaper splashed photographs of the U.S. soldiers posing by naked, hooded inmates on page one with the banner headline ``The Scandal.'' Al-Wafd, an opposition paper, displayed similar photos beneath the headline, ``The Shame!''

President Bush has condemned the mistreatment, saying he shared ``a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.'' He said that is ``not the way we do things in America.''

Arabs first saw the photographs on the satellite television stations Al-Arabiya, based in the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, which led their news bulletins with them Friday. Most newspapers do not publish on Fridays in the Arab world.

A U.S. Army report obtained by The New Yorker magazine said Iraqi detainees were subjected to ``sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses'' at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Those abuses included pouring phosphoric liquid from chemical lights on detainees, pouring cold water on naked detainees and threats of rape, said the internal report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.

Detainees were beaten with a broom handle and one was sodomized with ``a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick,'' the report said, according to the magazine.

The report was based on ``detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence,'' The New Yorker said in its May 10 issue.

Six U.S. soldiers facing courts-martial in the abuse allegations have been reassigned in Iraq. Their boss, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and at least seven others have been suspended from their duties at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. military said.

The prison was notorious under Saddam Hussein's rule, and Bush has made a point of taking credit for shutting down the ousted dictator's ``torture chambers.''

``Shame on America. How can they convince us now that it is the bastion of democracy, freedoms and human rights? Why do we blame our dictators then?'' asked Mustafa Saad, who was reading morning papers in a downtown Cairo cafe.

The Iraqi Governing Council should investigate and the nation's Human Rights Ministry should intervene, member Sondul Chapouk said.

``I demand such investigation because all the world is shocked by such images,'' Chapouk said. ``During Saddam's time we rejected such acts and after the liberation we still reject them.''

Fellow council member Dara Nor al-Din, a former judge, said, ``We used to criticize Saddam's regime regarding the beating of detained people, so why should we accept to repeat the same tragedy?''

Mohammed Hassan Taha, an editor at Nile Sports News Television, said Arabs should not allow the matter to pass quietly.

``This is not humiliation of Iraqis, it is humiliation of all Arabs,'' Taha said while buying Akhbar el-Yom at a newsstand.

During Saddam's brutal rule, Arab media rarely criticized or even highlighted news of atrocities reported by world human rights watchdogs. Iraq activists always complained that ignoring the abuses encouraged the Iraqi dictator to carry out gross human rights violations.

The photographs were first broadcast Wednesday on CBS' ``60 Minutes II.'' Two images were published in Saturday's New York Times.

Britain also confirmed Friday it was investigating its own prisoner abuse scandal, with the Daily Mirror newspaper publishing photos of a hooded prisoner reportedly beaten by British soldiers.

The photos at Abu Ghraib prison, taken last year, were inflammatory in an Arab world already angry about the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

One of them 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. Other photos, with the genitals blurred, simulated sexual acts.

``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.''

Hussein al-Saeedi, spokesman for Kuwait's al-Salaf radical Islamic group, said the images ``make every sensible person doubt all the principles Western democracies are offering'' and show the need for an end to the U.S. occupation.

``America justified its invasion of Iraq by saying the country was under a dictatorship. Unfortunately, Americans are now torturing the Iraqi people in the same place Saddam tortured them,'' he said.

In Syria, Damascus merchant Sahban Alawi, 45, asked, ``What's the difference between them and Saddam Hussein? They are doing to Iraq more than what he did.''

In Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the commander of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, was being sent to Iraq to take over the coalition detention facilities.

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

Amnesty International has warned that evidence of prisoner abuse ``will exacerbate an already fragile situation.'' And New York-based Human Rights Watch said any investigation also should target superior officers.