Free Republic

The United Nations has evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is directly orchestrating atrocities against his opponents, Navi Pillay, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told The Daily Telegraph on Friday. The evidence paves the way for a war crime trial if he is ever handed over to face international justice, she said. Assad was deeply implicated in the growing toll of atrocities in Syria, Pillay told the newspaper, warning that he must not be permitted to “trade justice for peace” in any future negotiations. Investigators working for the UN teams, including a specialist commission of inquiry to track fighting...

To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the surrender of Japan on Aug. 15, the Chinese government has released a film made by an Episcopal priest documenting the Nanjing massacre. The Rev. John G. Magee, an Episcopal missionary in China from 1912-1940, recorded the Dec. 13, 1937, capture of the city and six-week killing spree by Japanese soldiers that claimed over 300,000 Chinese lives. China’s Xinhua News Agency reported the National Museum in Beijing began screenings of Fr. Magee’s film on Aug. 10, and that a library in Nanjing dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of the massacre had...

Marines searching for holdout guerrillas in Fallujah yesterday discovered the mutilated body of a blond woman lying in the street under a blood-soaked cloth — and officials believe it could be one of two Western women kidnapped last month. The body could not be immediately identified, but Margaret Hassan, 59, a Briton who runs Iraq's division of CARE International, and Polish-born Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, are the only kidnapped women who remain unaccounted for. As U.S. and Iraqi troops pushed deeper into devastated Fallujah, other kidnappers who last week snatched relatives of the prime minister announced that they had...

A mass grave containing the bodies of children, babies and their mothers has been unearthed in Iraq.Shocked investigators reported finding "thighbones the size of matchsticks" at what they believe is the site of one of Saddam Hussein's atrocities. Among the findings-were the skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys. A baby had been shot in the back of its head and was found still being clutched by its mother, who had been shot in the face. The discovery was reported as Tony Blair came under mounting pressure to apologise to Parliament for the misleading intelligence claiming Saddam had weapons...

Former Editor-in-Chief of Egyptian Government Paper: 'We were Educated from Childhood that the Holocaust is a Big Lie' On a recent program on Egypt's Al-Mihwar TV, a group of politicians and journalists discussed the issue of Holocaust denial. The panel included former newspaper editor Muhammad Al-Zurqani, columnist Abd Al-Qader Yassin, and author Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, who recently made news for publishing an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Liwaa Al-Islami titled "The Lie about the Burning of the Jews," which alleged that the annihilation of the Jews in gas chambers during World War II was a lie invented by...

The message of terrorism is itself a weapon. We must work to defuse it. Did you buy a paper? I asked my daughter. No, she said with a grimace and shudder. "I couldn't face it, I didn't want to read about it." The "it", of course, was Beslan, and hundreds of children like my daughter's children, like your children, lying in that charnel-house of a gym. The first day of school, the crisp new uniforms, the songs and clasped hands, then terrible fear and death. A universal nightmare seemingly beyond scripting or imagining. But now that we have seen it...

The folks at pleasevote.com are showing another "even-handed" treatment of the election cycle. A drawing of President Bush sitting in a blood splattered shirt while eating a child will not only be used by the group on their own web-site but will also appear on the back cover of The Nation magazine on the July 5th issue. Richard Serra is the artist, and Serra was once praised by First Lady Laura Bush for a piece in a Texas museum. Those who have seen it call the new Serra piece simply "demonizing" and "disgusting"... It is my opinion that the middle...

When the body of Kim Sun-il was found 35 km west of Baghdad toward Falluja at 5:20 p.m. (10:22 p.m. Korean time) on June 22, it was discovered that a booby trap had been installed in his body.

The heated charge that prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib by U.S. service personnel was somehow equivalent to that perpetrated by Saddam Hussein – a notion pervasive in the Muslim world and epitomized in the West by Sen. Edward Kennedy's remark that "we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management'' – has had ice-cold water dumped on it by a horrific new video. Screened for reporters last week by Washington's American Enterprise Institute, the 4-plus-minute video clip, reportedly obtained from the Pentagon, captures the routine beating, torture, dismemberment and decapitation that occurred daily at the hands...

Hillary: we will not be deterred Friday June 18, 2004 (New York-AP) -- At a Democratic fund-raiser in Trenton, New Jersey, the crowd groaned this afternoon when New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton told them of Paul Johnson Junior's murder in Saudi Arabia. After expressing condolences to his family, Clinton said Johnson's senseless murder is an example that should strengthen the nation's fight against terrorism. ``This is what we are fighting against,'' Clinton said. ``Rest assured, we will not be deterred.'' Johnson's family is in seclusion at a house in Galloway Township, New Jersey, where they have been holding a...

June 16, 2004 -- THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over. Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises. Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader. But these awful...

Baghdad – Ibrahim al-Idrissi, 37, goes to work every day with a handgun in a holster on his hip. In most countries, the line of work Idrissi is in wouldn't require such firepower. But this is Iraq. Idrissi is the president of the Association for Free Prisoners, an Iraqi non-governmental organization that has been documenting the execution of political prisoners under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Many of Saddam's torturers and executioners are still at large. There have been two attempts on Idrissi's life, and three on the organization's headquarters in Baghdad. "Fortunately, their aim hasn't been very good so...

PORTLAND - The radio station KNRK at 94.7 FM is issuing an apology to its listeners after talk show hosts Marconi, Tiny and sidekick Nickie J. laughed at and ridiculed the beheading of American Nick Berg. The three were fired Thursday afternoon, after airing the audio recording of Berg's murder repeatedly on Wednesday and laughing at the incident. "Disgusting… I'm speechless," said one woman. KNRK and Entercom, the company that owns the station, apparently agreed, playing an apology over the airwaves for their listeners: The actions of the KNRK News Morning Show were insensitive, inappropriate and repulsive. On behalf of...

Muslim Mobs, Seeking Vengeance, Attack Christians in Nigeria By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 13, 2004 KANO, Nigeria, May 12 - Muslim mobs brandishing machetes and clubs attacked Christians in the streets of Kano on Wednesday as security forces struggled to quell a two-day rampage to avenge a massacre of hundreds of Nigerian Muslims. The police confirmed that at least 30 had been killed in strife engulfing Kano in northern Nigeria. Thousands of people, most of them belonging to the city's minority Christian population, cowered in army barracks and police stations as mobs attacked people outside. Witnesses said dozens more...

MSNBC said this morning that Nick Berg "paid with his life" for the prisoner abuse. Indeed, the story was about whether Rumsfeld should resign, and the killing was just more evidence he should. USA Today headline: Brutality Intensifies In Iraq. Beheading is portrayed as a consequence of, part of the prisoner abuse story, and a supposed break down in order in Iraq which is the U.S.'s fault.On radio they are playing up the angle that Berg died because Iraq is so "unstable" and Nick's father has given a statement that he's not surprised by his son's murder because the U.S....

To his supporters, Erich Priebke is an old man who has paid for his mistakes and should be pardoned. To his foes, the 90-year-old convicted Nazi war criminal, who's serving a life sentence under house arrest, shouldn't be allowed to walk free ever again. Both sides plan demonstrations Saturday to make their cases, sparking anew a debate over Priebke's fate that has involved Rome's mayor, Jewish organizations and Italian lawmakers. "The people in Italy should show compassion for Priebke's victims, their widows and orphans by insisting that Erich Priebke never again be in a position to walk the streets of...

November 4, 2003OLD WOUNDSIraqis Seek Justice, or Vengeance, for Victims of the Killing FieldsBy SUSAN SACHS BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 3 — Until justice is done and Saddam Hussein is dead, Sadri Adab Diwan will carry with him the handwritten accusation that condemned his little sister to death.The sister, Hanaa, a high school student, "is conducting backward religious activity inside the school," a security agent wrote in black ink in October 1980, a time of widespread persecution of Shiite Muslims. "Please open a secret investigation."Soon afterward, Hanaa, a devout girl of 17, was arrested. She never returned home.It was only six...

John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein's regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound to have an impact on the public's already low respect for most journalists. The compulsively candid Burns, until recently the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq, wrote his comments for the new book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" (The Lyons Press), a collection of first-person accounts by journalists in Iraq. Burns, who has...

SOUTHERN IRAQ (AFP) - Three US troops were wounded , one seriously, after Iraqi soldiers used a Red Crescent ambulance to stage an attack in southern Iraq (news - web sites), an AFP correspondent reported. The Iraqi troops in Monday opened fire on a group of American soldiers who had approached the ambulance at a town north of Nasiriyah. The seriously injured soldier would be evacuated, while two others were undergoing surgery at a captured air base, a US air force source said.