Two good articles

[Abuz Zubair]

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

Terry Jones



I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.


It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.



And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.


The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!


What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting "stress positions", which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.


And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".


What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.


As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.


· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python

www.terry-jones.net


SOURCE: The Guardian

[Abuz Zubair]

The treatment of Faye Turney is wrong - but not in the same league as British and US abuses

Ronan Bennett



It's right that the government and media should be concerned about the treatment the 15 captured marines and sailors are receiving in Iran. Faye Turney's letters bear the marks of coercion, while parading the prisoners in front of TV cameras was demeaning. But the outrage expressed by ministers and leader writers is curious given the recent record of the "coalition of the willing" on the way it deals with prisoners.



Turney may have been "forced to wear the hijab", as the Daily Mail noted with fury, but so far as we know she has not been forced into an orange jumpsuit. Her comrades have not been shackled, blindfolded, forced into excruciating physical contortions for long periods, or denied liquids and food. As far as we know they have not had the Bible spat on, torn up or urinated on in front of their faces. They have not had electrodes attached to their genitals or been set on by attack dogs.


They have not been hung from a forklift truck and photographed for the amusement of their captors. They have not been pictured naked and smeared in their own excrement. They have not been bundled into a CIA-chartered plane and secretly "rendered" to a basement prison in a country where torturers are experienced and free to do their worst.



As far as we know, Turney and her comrades are not being "worked hard", the euphemism coined by one senior British army officer for the abuse of prisoners at Camp Bread Basket. And as far as we know all 15 are alive and well, which is more than can be said for Baha Mousa, the hotel receptionist who, in 2003, was unfortunate enough to have been taken into custody by British troops in Basra. There has of course been a court martial and it exonerated the soldiers of Mousa's murder. So we can only assume that his death - by beating - was self-inflicted; yet another instance of "asymmetrical warfare", the description given by US authorities to the deaths of the Guantánamo detainees who hanged themselves last year.


And while the families of the captured marines and sailors must be in agonies of uncertainty, they have the comfort of knowing that the very highest in the land are doing everything they can to end their "unjustified detention". They can count themselves especially lucky, for the very same highest of the land have rather different views on what justifies detention where foreign-born Muslims in Britain are concerned. In the case, for example, of the Belmarsh detainees, suspicion justified arrest; statements extracted under torture from third parties justified accusation; and secret hearings justified imprisonment.


With disregard for the rights of prisoners now entrenched at the very top of government, it comes as no surprise that abuses committed by rank and file soldiers go virtually unremarked. No one in politics or the media dares censure the military, surely today the only institution still immune from any sort of criticism, even when soldiers are brutal and murderous towards captives. Instead of frankly facing up to the wrongs soldiers have perpetrated, officers and ministers speak of difficult work done in testing conditions, deliberate provocations, and propaganda by the enemy.


We all know in our bones that soldiers and civilians in revolt don't mix. Ask any historian. Ask them about what British soldiers did in Kenya, French soldiers did in Algeria, and Americans in Vietnam. While you're at it, ask them what the RAF did in Iraq under British rule in the 1920s (gassed Kurds, in case you've forgotten).


We must all hope that Faye Turney and her comrades are returned to their families safely and soon. Then perhaps we can compare their accounts of their treatment with what Moazzam Begg and the Tipton Three have to say about Guantánamo, what Prisoner B has to say about Belmarsh, and what the men arrested with Baha Mousa can tell us of his screams on the night he died.


· Ronan Bennett's latest novel, Zugzwang, is published by Bloomsbury in July


SOURCE: The Guardian

[intissar]

The Americans have created the new category of Enemy Combatants and no longer adhere to the 5. Geneva Convention on Prisoners of war.

So we have to ask what happened to the 5 Iranian employees of the Iranian Consulate in Abtar in Iraq.
We never heard and saw them in the news again - they became 5 more victims of America's sadistic war on terror.

The same seems to apply to Mr. Asgari, the depicted Iranian defector.
Or are various speculations on the internet true, wondering if he had to be persuaded to move to the nice house, romantically located amidst the cedar trees, not far from the place of his disappearance ?
What matters is that he was never heard and seen of in the news again.

America's war against Iran is going to take place, independent of the release of the British prisoners.
There remains always the option of a pre-emptive strike which Mr. Bush can authorize without having to ask for approval from congress, any time.

However, America's war against Iran does not imply British military aid.
The British prisoners in Iran seem to make British participation in America's war against Iran rather mandatory.

[gag order]

the articles were objective and well observed but unfortunately these views are far too 'academic' and objective to appear in the dumbed down newspapers that appeal to the majority of british 'readers'

two good articles? make that two very good articles............

[Abuz Zubair]

What of a nation where the most widely read Tabloid is...

The Sun

[intissar]

What about Yvonne Ridley, the famous prisoner of the Taliban ?
She could write to the SUN and reitrate her treatment by the Taliban - who released her after all.

And one might wonder for what precise reason the British sailors entered exacly this Iranian ship and not any other one ?
Maybe their commander [I am not well informed on military terminology] had some information that he himself applied in good faith - but that was partly based on misinformation.

Maybe the commander's information, based in which he gave the order to inspect exactly this Iranian vessel, had deliberately been tampered with in order to create exactly this situation.

The borders in this water are argued about since the Ian-Iraq war - and the Iranians obviously are willing to pursue a mutually face-saving compromise and let the prisoners go after that.

Who wants war against Iran if not America !
So we should not be surprised if this present prisoner situation is used by America to quickly assemble allies of the willing for the America's war against Iran.

[abu_ibrahim]

Writing to The Sun will not serve any purpose. This newpaper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who has a agenda with the neo-cons of the US and supporting all US policies. He is also a Australian Zionist.

[intissar]

We should be worried about the prisoners if they were in American custody:

They would be enemy combatants, held incommunicando in indefinite detention at an undisclosed location - and be tortured !

[Umm Ahmed]

The Americans are playing games , they know fine that the Iranians if they find anyone near their waters they are taken to land, untill the respective embassy is contacted,The fishermen of the gulf know this and so do all the ships patrolling the gulf.
They just want any excuse to attack, and are inciting the public to hate Iran.