Torture Al Qaeda style - and if you think the U.S. military recruitment methods are bad, check out the ones al Qaeda is using....
The mainstream media seems largely uninterested in the story of al Qaeda's treatment of Iraqi detainees, but thankfully CNN's Senior Baghdad, Jane Arraf, is on the case, reporting on Iraqslogger from Baquba:
He wasn’t anyone rich, or important – he only sold used clothes for a living but they saw him smoking at the bus depot and that was enough for them to take him away.
He rolls up his pants to show me the scars inflicted during four days in captivity by suspected al-Qaeda members – this 24-year-old Iraqi man afraid to give his name and afraid to show his face on camera.
His legs are painfully thin from what appears to be a lifetime of near malnutrition. On his ankles, feet and hands are the raised round scars where he says his captors butted cigarettes out on his skin. He pulls up his striped cotton T-shirt to show me the same marks on his chest.
“They told me the Islamic State prohibits smoking,” he said. They were wearing masks, he said. When they checked his ID they found a Shiite name. They shoved him face-first into a car, blindfolded him and took him to the house in Baquba crowded with hostages.
The vendor was one of seven Iraqis rescued by soldiers from the 3-2 Stryker Brigade’s 5th Battalion 20th Infantry Regiment when they swept through an area of Old Baquba last week known as an al-Qaeda stronghold.
Nine others they were holding – including four Iraqi police – were shot dead just before the Americans arrived and the insurgents fled.
The man told Arraf that Al Qaeda was holding him because they wanted to kill his son, an Iraqi policeman.
As Arraf went on to report:
American and Iraqi officials say while al-Qaeda is able to draw marginalized young men with few prospects, when they don’t come willingly, they are using increasingly brutal recruiting methods.
“People used to be able to get by by saying ‘We’re with you’ and offer passive support by turning a blind eye to a lot of things that are going on. Now they say ‘you’re with us or against us’ and if you say ‘I’m with you’, they make you prove it,” [a U.S. intelligence who insisted on anonymity] officer said.
She said one 15-year-old boy arrested in Baquba said he was kidnapped by al Qaeda, raped and beaten and told they would kill his family unless he joined them. His first test was shooting someone, she said.
Contrast all the headlines your reading about this Al Qaeda torture story with the barrage you had to endure regarding Abu Ghraib.
The media's deafening silence reminds me of the UN Human Rights Council.
Last June, the council distinguished itself by singling out Israel for annual reviews of its alleged human rights abuses while expressing no interest in reviewing the activities of other countries with far worse records - namely, Myanmar, and North Korea, not not to mention several Arab countries.
Even then Secretary-General Kofi Annan was was incredulous. As he said in his annual International Human Rights Day address that year: "[It's] not that Israel should be given a free pass. Absolutely not. But the Council should give the same attention to grave violations committed by other states as well.".
By the same token, coudn't the media at least mention this Al Qaeda torture story?
Really, it's not as if it could be considered culturally insensitive or anything. Al Qaeda's victims here are other Arabs, in many cases, their fellow Sunnis. The media shouldn't be giving these guys a pass just because they're not, I don't know, Western, American, Israeli, whatever.
Can't everyone just be held to the same standard? I am certain people would suffer less if this simple rule were applied.
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