Anger fuels calls for revenge

2004-05-05 14:33

Dubai - Islamic websites were being flooded on Wednesday with reports on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US guards, with many people calling for revenge against the "new Crusaders."

"The Crusaders are back. Where are you Saladin?" asked Khaled Hammam from Chechnya on the site www.al-ansar.biz, in reference to the 12th century Iraqi Kurdish warrior who defeated Europe's Christian invaders.

Internet sites continued to reproduce graphic pictures of prisoners shown naked and in humiliating positions at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The pictures are shown with fiery remarks calling for "cleansing the honour" of Muslims.

"The new conservatives, and particularly the gang of Bush, are enjoying the humiliation of the Muslims," wrote Kuwaiti Islamist Sheikh Hamed ben Abdallah al-Ali on www.qal3ah.net.

"You real terrorists who are leading the jihad, continue on the same path, unite under this banner and terrorise the enemies of Islam," said the Salafist religious leader.

The two sites also published an editorial by the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi denouncing "the scandalous aggression against Iraqi detainees which shows the contempt of the US administration for all Arabs and Muslims."

"Sheikh Osama, his deputy Ayman Zawahiri and the followers of Al-Qaeda should be the happiest people in the world while watching these humiliating pictures which give them the best motives to mobilise frustrated youths who care for their religion and dignity," it said.

Pierce the eyes

One internet user, presenting himself on www.alsaha.net as a "resistance" fighter in Iraq, said "our anger and revenge will not be appeased until we pierce the eyes which saw the sexual organs of the Iraqis and until the Americans, British and Israelis are castrated on the banks of the Tigris and Euphratus rivers."

Another internet user from Jordan, Abdel Jabbar Abu Gharbiya, called on the "heroic fighters" in Iraq to "cut the penises of enemy soldiers taken prisoner and to release them in order for them to suffer the pains of humiliation."

Some users said prisoners were abused to deliver a message to Muslims seeking to take part in the resistance against the United States.

"Publishing these pictures is part of the psychological warfare against Muslims, just like pictures of Saddam" Hussein, said a user on www.al-ansar.biz.

- AFP