Global furor grows over Iraq abuse photos; MI reportedly ordered so

By: Sultan Ahmed

CAIRO, Egypt: As worldwide furor mounted over abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US and British troops and the nations said the United States only cares about the rights of Americans, US President Bush warned of more serious violence to come in Iraq before a power transfer on June 30.

According to a report in The New Yorker magazine one of the six US military policemen accused of humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison outside Baghdad was quoted in his personal letters and private journal as detailing the abuse and saying military intelligence had ordered it.

The magazine said it had obtained a US Army Report Iraqi detainees were subjected to “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses” at the prison. Those abuses included threats of honor and the pouring of water and liquid from chemical lights on detainees, 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 prison scandal broke out Wednesday, after CBS's “60 Minutes II” program broadcast a series of pictures, one of them showing a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. He had been told he would be electrocuted if he fell off, the report said. Other pictures showed nude prisoners lying on each other as smiling US troops, some of them women, pointed and laughed.

Six US 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 US military said.

Meanwhile, Britain launched an inquiry after Saturday's Daily Mirror newspaper published five black and white photographs of British troops it said were kicking, stamping and urinating on a hooded Iraqi in Basra, southern Iraq, where Britain has around 7,500 soldiers.

The images were published only days after pictures of smiling American troops abusing Iraqi prisoners provoked anger and dismay around the world.

The UN condemned the act. The Arab League said on Saturday the photos were “beyond disgust” and that such acts might have been expected from Saddam Hussein, but not those claiming to bring freedom. Human rights group Amnesty International said it had warned US and British authorities in Iraq that captives were being abused.

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Bush, Blair vow to act on abuse of Iraqis as fury runs in Arab world

WASHINGTON: The US and its staunch ally Britain condemned the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the hands of American forces vowing to punish those responsible, as the Arab world reacted angrily to photographs of mistreatment from inside an Iraqi prison.

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