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Links April 28 09
- Canadian sadism cover-up – Military police failed to carry out obligations to detainees, probe finds – (Globe&Mail)
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Or little Eichmans? – Naomi Wolf: – We are all torturers in America – (Guardian)
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Obama the neocon – The New American Century Has Not Been Cancelled – (Newshoggers)
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Real or fake? – The pirate king of Somalia – (Globe&Mail)
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Unlike Helena, I think China Hand is wrong with his analysis of Pakistan. More later …
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'Get your hands off my country' – Polish pianist stops show with anti-US tirade – (Guardian)
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Dangerous 'defense' pork – U.S. Plans Attack and Defense in Cyberspace Warfare – (NYT)
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Because 'they are honest' – Disgruntled Japanese turn to resurgent communists – (Guardian)
- Slow recognition – Are CDS a good thing? – (Salmon/Reuters)
Please share your links, news and views in the comments.
Is the US government helping to cover up brutal torture by the UAE Royal Family?
Short answer: yes.
I can’t believe that this has merited so little attention in the US media or the blogosphere. The brother of the Royal Prince of the UAE, one Sheikh Issa, was caught on a tape, which was smuggled about by an American businessman, brutally torturing a dude with the aid of a cop.
The video is especially shocking because it also shows a man in police uniform helping to tie up the victim and hold him down in the middle of the desert. At the start of the torture session, which is believed to have happened some time before 2005, Issa stuffs sand in the victim’s mouth and fires a machine gun into the sand around him as the man screams helplessly.
At one point, Issa tells the cameraman to get a close-up. “Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show,” the sheikh says.
Later the sheikh beats the man with a wooden plank with a nail protruding from it, and pours salt in the bloody wounds left by his blows. He also inserts an electric cattle prod in the man’s anus and turns it on, and pours lighter fluid over the man’s testicles, which he then sets alight. Finally, the man is held down in the sand and a Mercedes is driven over him. The sound of bones breaking can be clearly heard.
What’s more, the UAE government covers it up, saying that because the poor man, an Afghan grain dealer who Issa accused of cheating the Royal Sheik of $5000, amazingly lived to tell the tale, “the matter had been settled privately between the two men and each had agreed not to press charges against the other.” And then the Ministry of the Interior says, in reference to the presence of the police officer, “All rules, policies and procedures were followed correctly by the police department.”
The businessman, Bassam Nabulsi, who brought the tapes to ABC News also accuses the UAE government of torturing him in an effort to extract the tapes, this after a falling out with one-time business partner Issa. Additionally:
Nabulsi credits US embassy staff with keeping him alive while in prison, but he also says he brought the existence of the torture tape – and the collusion of the police – to the US’s attention to little effect, including to a US official assigned to train UAE police.
To his credit, the co-chair of the House Human Rights Commission, Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), whom I otherwise know nothing about, has called on Hillary to investigate this, but somehow I doubt that will be enough pressure.
Here’s the sources for all of the above, including the horror-inducing video, which was broadcast last week apparently and otherwise elicited no other comment that I can find in American media, with some exceptions in the blogosphere, including Left I and Angry Arab.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/26/manchester-city-torture-tape
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=92354§ionid=351020205
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7402099&page=1
Posted by: Rojo | Apr 29 2009 0:18 utc | 10
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