British torture pictures examined/ Authenticity questioned

http://www.itv.com/news/1497933.html

Pictures apparently showing a British soldier abusing an Iraqi prisoner could be a hoax and are being examined by Army experts.

Given to the Daily Mirror by two serving soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, they appear to show UK troops beating a hooded man, pointing a gun at his head and urinating on him.

The soldiers told the paper they are concerned that a "rogue element" in the Army is undermining efforts to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi people.

....
The Mirror has insisted the images are genuine but doubts have been raised because the prisoner's clothes appear too clean, and he is wearing western underwear.

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Authenticity questioned...
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=050104114335

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However the BBC cited sources close to The Queen's Lancashire Regiment as saying they believed that many aspects of the photographs were suspicious. They believe the pictures may not have even been taken in Iraq.

They believe the rifle is an SA80 mk 1 - which was not issued to troops in Iraq. They say soldiers in Iraq wore berets or hard hats - and not floppy hats as in the photos. They also believe the wrong type of Bedford truck is shown in the background - a type never deployed in Iraq.
....

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The inquiry by the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch would "not leave any stone unturned", he added.

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The reason for making the photos public was, they said, to show why the US-UK coalition was encountering such resistance in Iraq.

Army spokesman Roger Goodwin, on behalf of The Queen's Lancashire Regiment, said there was "clearly some form of link to the regiment". "But the precise form of that link, including whether the soldiers involved in the alleged atrocities were members of the QLR, needs to be established.”

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The regimental secretary, retired Lt Col John Downham, said: "We are furious ....

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Then what is a hoax and what is real, except for those who were there to witness what was happening?

....that they are proven to be a hoax, that the events described and photographed did not take place and that the hoaxers are brought to justice. If they are true then ditto. I note that Blair is hedging on their authenticty, saying...IF they are true. I hear no such hedging from Bush et al.(yet)

and the MOD are trying hard to find out which soldiers grassed
You have seen this of course.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14205031%26method=full%26siteid=50143%26headline=squaddie%2dabuse%2dwitnesses%2d%2dwe%2dtold%2dthe%2dtruth-name_page.html
Aslo reflect for a moment that the "this happens in war" defence for the not phoney US pictures does not compute. Orchestrated, public sexual perversion/assault practised on groups of men by women is a new low. The US takes the depravity trophy. Never have war criminals bragged about, photographed or circulated pics of this type of assault to friends before.

Firstly they are professionally taken, in sharp focus, well composed and in black and white (which is what a professional photographer would use), plus you don't actually see the face of the soldier. This contrasts with the amateurish American snaps.

Secondly the thief's shirt is very clean considering he's been beaten up, and conveniently has an Iraqi flag on it!

Also, I know there are white Iraqis, but the the guy does look quite pale, and I just get the impression somehow that it's a british guy dressed up to try and look like an Iraqi.

Curious how the Mirror managed to get their hands on these pics. I smell a red herring and it's rotting from the head down.

The Mirror is actually more aligned with the parliamentary left wing of the Labour party.

This could be a sting though. I do admit I share some of the doubts about the pics and that this could be a set up to try to neutralise criticism of the war.

Fact is that there have been several cases of abuse reported lately. This could be a way of trying to cast doubt on them -- say that they're all overblown or hoaxes.

It's starting to smell bad.

....if shown to be a hoax and the pics staged. And bad for all of us as the Mirror has been a consistently sound paper on the war and Bush, if rather tastelessly so at times. John Pilger is often in the Mirror. Among others.

I can't comment on the kit used, but:
1) The Prisoner does look a bit too clean - A pristine white shirt? Even though the prisoner's lost thier trousers, their legs look like they just got out of a shower. And the room is spotless.
2) How many Iraqi's would actually be wearing a shirt with their flag on it? C'mon...
3) The pictures are very good quality, crisp and detailed, and the shadow caused by the flash suggests a top-mounted flash gun - Not the sort of high-end kit a grunt would carry over to Iraq, but exactly the sort of kit a newspaper photographer would have lying around.
The "butt in groin" shot should be blurred in a couple of places, unless you're using serious high-speed film. Or, it's been posed.
4) Odd that the soldier is wearing a floppy hat that covers his face, rather than a normal helmet.
5) Finally, if the Mirror is so outraged by the shots, why protect the ID of those involved?

The Mirror isn't, it was anti-war and kind of appeals to the traditional i.e. leftwing working class people.

We have known for over a year that such trophy photos have been taken, and that Iraqis have been abused by British soldiers and even murdered. Investigations are supposedly underway already.

These pictures seem to be typical of what soldiers are taking home with them. The Independent on Sunday reports from Accrington, Lancashire,

"In Accrington, the town where the regiment implicated is based, the reaction of old soldiers, saddened by what they had seen, was that they were genuine. Some of those who heard rogue squaddies bragging in the Accrington working men's club about the treatment they had dished out to Iraqi prisoners did not like what they were listening to.

Some of the younger ones seemed to think that tales of bullying and torture were a good laugh. Veterans of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the cold war found it stomach-turning.

"I told their ringleader it was unspeakable. Absolutely out of order," said Anthony "Sam" Quinn, 35, a former grenadier guardsman who served in Northern Ireland and Berlin. He added: "They were sitting round practising their Iraqi phrases. They showed us the pictures. It caused big trouble. One of them said: 'Don't get them out in here.'"


(URL) http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=517304

It was reported by The Sun and posted here at DU about a year ago.

Physical and mental torture was combined with sexual abuse and humiliation. It was one of the most disgusting and outrageous stories of "alleged prisoner abuse" I have ever read.

Go to the link below and scroll down about 1/3 of the page.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/memoryblog.htm

Snapshots Show British Soldiers Brutalizing Iraqi POWs

snip <"Back from Iraq, a British soldier took a roll of film to be developed. When the photo developer who owns the shop saw what she was processing, she called the police, who arrested the soldier."

"In this article, The Sun (London) describes the pictures: ONE was apparently taken in a warehouse. It showed a man stripped at least to the waist and suspended high in the air by a rope attached to one of the forks on a fork-lift truck."> snip

04 June 2003

Much more....

phony photos are flooding the net by those who want to quell this scandal before it gets too hot for them to handle. this way, they can claim 'the photos' are fake, even if they're only some photos that really are.

I wouldn't be surprised.

it could be the other way round - the photos were faked to draw attention to a true story. Newspapers don't print big stories unless there's pics to go with them, so someone conveniently provided the pics.

Or, someone somehwere decided that as usual the Brits should take some of the burden/spotlight off the US.

Whatever the truth is, it's a pretty messed up situation.

For two reasons:
a) to show that it's not only american soldiers commiting torture

b) to raise doubts about any further incidents of torture that will arise (and I have not many doubts that more cases of torture will surface).

Or am I reaching for the tin foil too quickly.

The rats are deserting the NeoCon ship and there is money in these here pics. What tales those "civilian contractors" will have to tell!

That's what surprises me most. I mean, the "soldiers" in the picture have the wrong gun - but a very close version. And the wrong truck - but a very close model. And the wrong uniform, but a very close type.

I'm not surprised that these pictures aren't genuine, but the effort that went into them is impressive. I wonder if the guy is really pissing on the fake prisoner?

And seriously, in both this probable hoax and the real prison incident, what is the obsession with genitals? What are we liberating these people from, their pants?

The photographs are good enough to exact a powerful emotional response when first viewed. I was certainly taken in when I saw them. However, on closer examination it seems likely that they are phony. Although there is quite a bit of evidence to show that the British army has been involved in incidents where Iraqi civilians have been beaten up and even killed, I do not think the average squaddie would have the camera equipment or the expertise to document such events with 'trophy' photographs of this quality. What worries me is that it looks as though the pictures were manufactured with the deliberate intention of being uncovered as fakes. Moreover, I am starting to wonder whether the supposedly anti-war Daily Mirror is in on the scam. They are bound to have plenty of professional photographers in their employment so they should have the expertise available to spot whether the pictures are genuine. I suspect someone is running a damage limitation exercise to reduce the domestic political fallout from the exposure of the treatment of detainees at Abu Gharaib. If the validity of some of the photographs appearing the press can be undermined then it will be easier to question the validity of those that show genuine cases of abuse and mistreatment of prisoners. Needless to say that, genuine or not, these photographs will have caused huge damage to what little standing Britain had left in the Arab and Muslim world. I would not be surprised if the UK was the target of the next terror attack.

We have the torture photos of 9 months ago and reports of abuse from at least 3 different UK battalions so "a few bad apples" just won't wash. The British public don't like this one bit and no one aside from the MOD is covering for "our boyz".

They say soldiers in Iraq wore berets or hard hats - and not floppy hats as in the photos.

Is that so? Well, they are LYING!

Check it out:

http://www.dw-world.de/dwelle/allgemein/bilder_show/0,3772,57232_1,00.jpg

Tell me, what is that soldier in the back row wearing? Wouldn't be a floppy hat would it? I suppose Blair is going to say that is not him in the middle?

I've seen other floppies too - much better in the sun than berets.
Edit: here's one from the US State Department site. The caption reads:

British Marines stick a leaflet to a wall in Abu al Khasib, south of Basra, southern Iraq, April 5, 2003. Leaflets and posters informed residents that coalition forces would not abandon the Iraqi people.

©AP/Wide World Photo/Terry Richards/Pool

And the differences between the SA 80 A1 and the SA 80 A2 are mostly internal and as for the truck I have never seen inside either of the trucks they are talking about. Basically, we would never know whether they were lying or not.

If they lied about the hat, it is reasonable to assume they are lying about everything else.

and people who heard soldiers bragging coming forward.

Unlike the USA, Britain has not opted out of the International Court. If allegations of abuse are not investigated satisfactorily then the beloved leader, as Commander in Chief, may find himself on a War Crimes charge. I would like to see the sanctimonious bastard argue his way out of that one.

on edit - While there reviewing this subject perhaps they can also finally resolve the case of all those trainee soldiers who 'killed themselves' under mysterious circumstances at Deepcut barracks. There are bereaved parents who still have not had a satifactory answer as to why their children died. The explanation of how one young squaddie managed to take his own life by shooting himself in the head twice should be particularly interesting.

The culture of brutality in the British Army is well known.

I would think in the hot Iraq sun a British soldier would prefer wearing a wide brimmed floppy hat for shade as opposed to a hot helmet or a little beret.

:kick:

Because it's not one of the porn pics, it's one that was presented to court martial the soldiers who did it.

They look so pure and honest.
But remember, we are still not sure about the death of Princess Diana.
I heard the other day that Wimp Prince Charles was going to be interviewed.

And Poodle Blair is not to be trusted for one hot minute.

including over 1.5 million Muslims.

It may surprise you to find that quite a lot of them do not

- Love the Royal family

- Support the occupation of Iraq

- Think Tony Blair tells the truth

- Approve of the abuse and torture of prisoners

Over a million of them took to the streets of London in protest over the illegal invasion of Iraq. They may not have succeeded but at least they tried.

It is that corrupt nexus between business and politics that is leading the western world to its doom not a particular race, religion or national group

I agree with you on all the rest

....to the naive and foolish. As Mark Twain said of another group - Goddamn them, they are are as bad as the rest of us.

We should all stop demonising people AND stop putting them on pedastals.

You don't need a studio quality Hasselblad to take a sharp photo - lots of inexpensive cameras will take excellent photos, especially in a place with ample sunlight such as Iraq. And clearly, the British soldiers took more than one kind of headwear with them to Iraq - probably more than one kind of rifle and truck too.

That being said, it is quite possible that fakes are being produced and salted in the internet wild in order to debunk the authentic photos. However, if there weren't authentic photos out there, there would be no need for fakes to debunk them.

and they both concurred that standard sodomy, fellatio and water-sport technique wasn't consistent with traditional UK procedure.

Their terse statement warranted that: "Our chaps tend to have much more elan than these fellows, and their goings-on were quite wanting in virtually every way. We'd characterize these as crude forgeries, not to mention rather unstimulating."

Beastly poor showing, what?

Pictures of torture ARE real, say squaddies Shock new claims of other attacks on Iraqis

By Paul Byrne And Stephen White

TWO soldiers who exposed British troops torturing an Iraqi suspect insisted yesterday they told the truth.

Making a point by point rebuttal of claims that pictures of the prisoner being beaten and urinated on were faked, the men said: "This happened. The pictures are real. We stand by every word of our story."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14205031%26method=ful...

But what about all the stories I saw in America that immediately said the pictures were not real?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1208975,00.html


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Yesterday, as scepticism in military circles grew about the veracity of pictures showing British soldiers torturing an Iraqi, Mirror employees remained privately confident that their editor had not fallen for a sophisticated hoax. If the mood was jittery inside the Mirror offices at Canary Wharf yesterday, no one dared say. But if Mr Morgan has been fooled, the newspaper world expects an abrupt end to his tumultuous nine years in charge of the tabloid.

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".... our sources are serving members of the regiment and are standing by their account of what happened and the veracity of the photographs. Although we appreciate that the Queen's Lancashire Regiment has concerns, as they put it, about the Daily Mirror, we also have very serious concerns about the behaviour of some of their troops in Iraq."

The paper kept the story a closely guarded secret while it was being worked on by staff in its northern office, where reporters had been looking into rumours surrounding a brutal "rogue element" in the regiment for some time.

....

One factor that subsequently convinced many at the Mirror was the certainty of their sources in the regiment, who have vigorously stuck by their story against what some at the paper dismiss as the "Colonel Blimps" who have poured scorn on the pictures.

Another source of reassurance for staffers was the reaction of the Ministry of Defence when officials were shown the photographs at 4pm on Friday afternoon.

Despite having more than three hours to get back to the Mirror and prevent publication, the MoD and the government said nothing to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Mirror's exclusive. Instead they quickly wheeled out grave responses from big-hitters including Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and General Sir Mike Jackson, Britain's most senior army officer.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

What... Me, lie???

I am not a crook!

:puke:

:argh:

PROOF THAT ABUSE PICS WERE REAL


By Paul Byrne And Stephen White

THE two soldiers who disclosed shocking photos of British troops abusing an Iraqi last night rejected claims the shots were fakes.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14205311%26method=full%26siteid=50143%26headline=this%2dis%2dnot%2da%2dhoax%2d%2di%2dsaw%2dit%2d%2di%2dwas%2dthere-name_page.html

No one questions the bags over the suspects heads. OUR LEADERS ARE INSANE. OUR MEDIA ARE WHORES OF A SHADOW GOVERNMENT. BUSH LEADS THE WORLD TO THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE:

By Tom Newton Dunn, Defence Correspondent, And Stephen White

DEFENCE chiefs said yesterday they were treating the Mirror's pictures of troopers torturing an Iraqi prisoner as genuine.

An MoD spokesman said: "We are taking the photographs at face value.

"It would be irresponsible to do anything else. Very serious allegations have been made and we must get to the bottom of them as soon as possible."

The announcement came as the probe into the scandal spread to three countries and Tony Blair faced mounting calls for an independent inquiry into our revelations.

In a further move the MoD gagged Lieutenant Colonel John Downham, regimental secretary of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, who has led suggestions that the pictures might be faked.

A spokesman said: "Lt Col Downham is not a Ministry of Defence employee. His comments do not accurately reflect the MoD's position on this matter."

A senior Army source added: "The colonel has been told to shut up.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14207000%26method=full%26siteid=50143%26headline=torture%2dprobe%2dspreads%2dto%2dthree%2dcountries-name_page.html

Larry: Are there WMD's in Iraq?
Whore: 'We will find more than double the WMDs the pResident has alluded to. That is the rule not the exception.' (paraphrase) Pre war.

So why doesn't Whore Woodward or other Media Whores now say,
'We will find more than double the Iraq prisoner torture cases than have already surfaced. That is the ruel not the exception.'