from our archives:

5/13/04 Philadelphia
PRESS RELEASE

Torture and Horrific Killing in Iraq

“ beating detainees with broom handle and a chair…threatening male detainees with rape…sodomizing a detainee with a broom stick…using military working dogs in attacking and abusing detainees…forcing naked detainees put on top of each other, masturbating, and practicing humiliating oral sex acts…”

These were just few lines extracted from the 53-page report of Major General Antonio M. Taguba who headed the investigation into the US Army’s prison system in Baghdad, Iraq (posted on 4/30/04 @ http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact). It was disturbing how mainstream media kept describing these blatant acts of torture as ‘abuse of detainees’ ignoring the fact that it was no less than what other dictatorship regimes, including Saddam Hussein, were doing against detainees.

In less than two weeks after these torture crimes were revealed another act of horror shocked the world when the brutal beheading of one US civilian citizen was committed publicly on the internet by a fanatic group in Iraq.

The Group Against Torture in Sudan (GATS) condemns in the strongest language the acts of terror and all those behind it in Iraq, and calls on human rights groups to press the Congress to conduct a full independent investigation in all prison systems under the juridisiction of the US Army in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

The savage brutal killing of the civilian US citizen that videotaped on the internet in the name of Allah as claimed by these inhuman butchers should not be seen separately from what these religious fanatics have been committing for more than a decade. Tens of thousands were butchered in the same way in Algeria during the mid 1990. Over 30, 000 innocent children, women and elders were brutally killed in Darfur region in Sudan with a full support from the Khartoum regime that shares the same fanatic ideology.

All human beings are precious and we see the horrific decapitation of Mr. Nick Berg as one incident among tens of thousands similar killings targeted Moslem people in Algeria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Pakistan, etc.

The Group Against Torture in Sudan (GATS)
Philadelphia, PA
USA