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MAY 13, 2004
National World
Are military abuse photos the turning point in the war?
By JIM LOBE
Special to the NNPA from
IB?I;'GIN
WASHINGTON (NNPA)
~When in 1970 Zsf¢’'magazine
published photos taken by
Senator Tom Harkin, then a
lowly congressional aide, of the
infamous “tiger cages” in
which suspected Viet Cong
men, women and even chil
dren were kept secretly — and
often crippled by the U.S.-
run South Vietnamese prison
systemn, it was another nail in
the coffin of a conflict on
which most of the U.S. public
had already soured.
Judging from the outrage
expressed here so far, the
broadcast and publication of
the photos of physical and sex
ual abuse of prisoners by their
US. guards in Abu Ghraib
prison near Baghdad are also
having a demoralising effect,
but the impact on the broader
U.S. “war on terrorism” may
be felt more acutely abroad.
The ranking Democrat on
the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Sen. Joseph
Biden, has described the pho
tos and the abuses depicted in
them as “the single most signif
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AP photo/Mamie Till-Mobley family
Undated family photo taken in Chicago shows Mamie Till-Mobley and her son, Emmett Till, whose
murder became a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. AP
Justice Dept. reopening investigation
of 1955 killing of black youth
By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -
The Justice Department said
Monday, May 10, it is reopen
ing the investigation into the
1955 murdcrt(l)%aErmncttle, a
black teenager whose death
while visiting Mississippi was
an early catalyst for the civil
rights movement.
Till was abducted from his
uncle’s home in Money, Miss.,
on Aug. 28, 1955. The mut
lated body of the 14-year-old
from Chicago was found by
fishermen three days later in
the Tallahatchie River.
Pictures of the slaying
shocked the world. Two white
men charged with murder —
Roy Bryant and his half broth
er, ].W. Milam — were acquit
ted by an all-white jury. Both
men have since died.
R. Alexander Acosta, assis
tant attorney general for civil
rights, said a recent public tele
vision documentary about the
killing and other new informa
tion brought to the Justice
Department’s attention sug
gests that additional people fi
icant undermining act thats
occurred in a decade in that
region of the world in terms of
standing’, and called on Presi
dent George W Bush to go
further than his statement Fri
day, May 7 that he felt “deep
disgust” for what had taken
place.
The New York Times 'called
the disclosures “an enormous
victory” for Osama bin Laden,
purported leader of the al-
Qaeda terrorist group. “The
invasion of Iraq, which has
already begun to seem like a
bad dream in so many ways,
cannot get much more night
marish than this”.
And, after reviewing reaction
from various media in the Arab
world, Juan Cole, an Iraq
expert at the University of
Michigan, mused, “I really
wonder whether, with the
emergence of these photos, the
game isnt over for the Ameri
cans in Iraq. Is it realistic, after
the bloody siege of Fallujah
and the Shiite uprising of early
April, and in the wake of these
revelations, to think that the
U.S. can stll win the hearts
and minds of the lragi Arab
public”? he asked.
alive were involved in the
“{%js brutal murdfgr and
tesque miscarriage of justice
g:ufgfled a nation and flelped
galvanize support for the mod
ern American civil rights
movement,” Acosta said. “We
owe it to Emmett Till, and we
owe it to ourselves, to see
whether after all these years
some additional measure of
justice remains possible.”
The five-year statute of limi
tations in effect at the time on
any federal charges has long
since expired but a state case
could stll be brought, Acosta
said. The FBI and Justice
Department prosecutors will
work on the investigation with
Joyce Chiles, district attorney
for Mississippis 4th Judicial
District.
Sen. Charles Schumer, a
New York Democrat who has
pushed for reopening the case,
said the recent PBS documen
tary indicated that seven more
people may have been involved
in Till's kidnapping, murder or
both.
“In this rare instance justice
delayed will not be justice
AUGUSTA FOCUS
The photos, which show the
taunting by female guards of
naked and hooded Iraqi pris
oners, who are also arranged in
explicitly sexual positions, were
first broadcast by CBS TV’s
‘Sixty Minutes ll’ last Thursday,
May 6.
They, as well as an internal
report by a two-star general
about abuses committed by
prison guards and military
intelligence, were also the sub
ject of a lengthy article in the
‘New Yorker’ magazine by
investigative journalist Sey
mour Hersh.
The 53-page report, by
Army Major Gen Antonio
Taguba, called for disciplinary
action against 10 members of
the Army, including a brigadier
general, a colonel and two
civilian contractors hired by
the military to help conduct
interrogations, and possible
criminal prosecutions against
at least six people.
Some reports said the con
tractors directed the abuse ses
sions. They are two of an esti
mated 15,000 in Iraq - highly
paid former elite soldiers from
countries as disparate as Chile
and South Africa.
denied,” Schumer said. “I hope
the Justice Department will
conduct a thorough, complete
and speedy investigation as
time is of the essence because
of the advanced age of many of
the potential witnesses.”
Airickca Gordon, a cousin of
Tills who was close .to his
mother, Mamie Till Mobley,
said the family was elated at the
news. Mamie Till Mobley,
who became a civil gfhts
activist and teacher, died in
Chicago in 2003 at age 81.
“Even tho shes at rest,
even thou she’s now
deceased, I feel her spirit will be
so much at peace,” Gordon
said. “Its kinm sad she’s not
here to experience it, but in my
own kincrf)f way, | think she
knows.”
The NAACP and other
individuals :3;; g’oups have
called repeat r reopeni
the msc?&wlfich has begf\mfi
subject of documentary films
anJ books. In a 2003 letter to
Mississippi officials, NAACP
President Kweisi Mfume said it
was “time to address what
remains an ugly mark” in state
and U.S. history.
According to Armed Forces
Chief of Staff, Gen. Richard
Mpyers, the abuses were isolated
and committed by “just a
handful” of soldiers, and
should not be seen as represen
tative of the military’s overall
performance.
But Taguba’s report, which
was also obtained by The Los
Angeles Times, described the
abuses as “systemic and illegal”
and suggested that the prob
lem might be far-reaching,
Taguba found that, in appar
ent violation of army regula
tions, interrogators from mili
tary intelligence asked military
police (MPs) guards to “set
physical and mental conditions
for the favourable interroga
tion of witnesses”.
Those directives resulted in
the performance of what Taguba
found were “numerous incidents
of sadistic, blatant and wanton
criminal abuses” committed
against detainees, including
“punching, slapping and kicking
detainees; videotaping and pho
tographing naked male and
female detainees; forcibly arrang
ing detainees in various sexually
explicit positions for photo
graphing; forcing detainees to
Bond urges graduates to remember
civil rights struggles
FARMVILLE, Va. (AP)
— Civil rights leader
Julian Bond invoked the
battle against segregation
Saturday to encourage
Longwood University
graduates to dedicate
their lives to the fight for
social justice.
Bond, chairman of the
NAACP, addressed Long
wood’s 867 graduates in a
county that played a key
role in Brown v. Board of
Education, the landmark
Supreme Court ruling
outlawing school segrega
tion.
A two-week student
walkout at Prince Edward
County’s all-black public
schools 50 years ago
prompted one of five law
suits leading to the
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Credit: Virginia Center for Digital History
Prince Edward County spent $194 per capita for education tools for black students at Robert R.
Moton High School while spending $Bl7 per capita for white students at Farmville High.
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A photo obtained by the Washington Post and released
Thursday, May 6, shows a detainee bound naked to a
bed in a cell at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad with
what appear to be female underpants over his head.
remove their clothing and keep
ing them naked for several days
at a time; forcing naked male
detainees to wear women’s
underwear; and forcing groups
of male detainees to masturbate
themselves while being pho
tographed and videotaped”.
Those abuses were document
Brown ruling. Virginia’s
“massive resistance” to
desegregation was central
to Bond’s remarks.
“Rather than abide by
the Brown decision and
integrate its schools, in
1959 Prince Edward
County shut them down,
choosing ignorance over
education,” Bond said in
remarks prepared for his
address to graduates.
“They remained closed
for five years —giving this
county the dastardly dis
tinction of being the only
school district in the
United States to close
public schools for such a
long time to avoid deseg
tegation,” Bond said.
Bond encouraged the
graduates to remember
ed by direct evidence, induding
photographs, while Taguba also
found “credible” evidence of
threatening male detainees with
rape, sodomising a detainee with
a chemical light and “perhaps a
broomstick”, and threatening
detainees with a pistol, among
other abuses.
“the tragedy and triumph
that is the history of
Prince Edward County
and the history of our
national struggle to come
to grips with: the unre
solved problem of race.”
Bond, a history profes
sor at the University of
Virginia, traced the rise
of the civil rights move
ment and the emergence
of anti-war activists from
that struggle.
“As we honor you grad
uates today for what you
have achieved, so ought
you honor them for what
they achieved for you,”
Bond said.
“They helped you learn
how to be free.”