Fallujah leaders condemn gruesome murders amid US threats of revenge

AFP | 4/02/04

[kattracks]

Town leaders in troubled Fallujah denounced the gruesome murder of four American contractors here, as imams decided to devote Friday prayers to condemn such acts considered sins in Islam.

Police and paramilitary forces were deployed across Fallujah, setting up checkpoints at main entrances to the dusty town west of Baghdad, with many anticipating the harsh retaliation vowed by the US Army.

In an apparent move to ease tensions and avoid escalation, town leaders rushed to denounce Wednesday's grisly killings as residents headed to mosques for Friday weekly prayers expected to issue similar condemnation.

"The City Council held a meeting late last night to condemn the acts of mutilation of the bodies," council president Saadallah al-Rawi told AFP.

"We will distribute a statement to that effect later today," he said.

Rawi also said "imams across Fallujah have decided to make a unified Friday sermon today that will condemn the mutilation of the bodies, based on the holy Koran and the teachings of Prophet Mohammed, which prohibit them."

Many Fallujah residents expressed dismay at the mutilation of the bodies which they considered against Muslim teachings, although some justified the acts as a reaction to army raids on homes and mosques in the town.

On Thursday, the army recovered remains of the four slain Americans, after police officers gathered dismembered body parts from various locations around the town, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

The four were killed in an ambush by armed insurgents in downtown Fallujah, located in the so-called Sunni Triangle region where insurgents are leading a battle against US-led occupation forces.

Following the attack charred bodies were dismembered and publicly paraded by jubilant residents in this town located in the so-called Sunni triangle where insurgents are waging a fierce battle against US-led occupation forces.

Graphic pictures and footage of the macabre killings and mutilation filled airwaves and newspapers, shocking viewers around the world and prompting Iraqi officials to issue stern condemnations.

Iraq's interim Governing Council denounced the killings as a "savage" act that did not represent the Iraqi people.

Council member Samir Sumaidai said "what happened in Fallujah represents the worst of savage behaviour."

"What happened is very far away from the nature of Iraq and Islam," said Rosch Schaways, deputy to Kurdish leader and council member Massoud Barzani.

US officials have vowed a forceful response to the murders.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony at Baghdad's police academy on Thursday, an angry Paul Bremer, the US overseer in Iraq, said: "Their deaths will not go unpunished."

Top US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt said "we will respond. It is going to be deliberate and precise and it will be overwhelming.

"We will re-establish control and will pacify that city," he added. "It will be at the time and place of our choosing."

Replaying scenes from Fallujah, US televisions noted the similarities with the abuse meted out to the corpses of American soldiers killed in Somalia in 1993 in an ill-fated raid depicted in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."

Pictures of a dead US serviceman being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu aired constantly on US television at the time, and led to the eventual evacuation of US forces from Somalia.

[Valin]

When will hear Muslims and their groups in the Freeworld loudly condem this act of barbarism? Not holding my breath.
Well not from the free world BUT here's what some Iraqis are saying

Fallujah and a flashback.
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
Like most Iraqis I was shocked to what happened in Fallujah and till now the Iraqi street condemns what happened and reject it. Even the mosques today including the major one in Fallujah condemned the horrible crime. But what I want to do today is an attempt to remind the others of our tragedy. You can now comprehend the extent of the crime that took place in Iraq for the past 35 years. We were ruled by people like those who committed the crime in Fallujah. Every day we were shocked by scenes like these for our beloved ones our children our thinkers and artists; our bodies were mutilated for 35 years.

You have the right to be shocked and we have the right to scream out loud this is the scene we were forced to see again and again for decades; amputation of limbs decapitation, cutting tongues, casting limbs in concrete, mincing human flesh. You probably have heard of Uday’s iron coffin but have you heard of the “the Ba’ath flame”? Which meant that the prisoner would be chained and stripped of his clothes and then he would be splashed with gasoline to be set on fire until he dies. You can imagine what the comrades of such prisoners would feel while the see and hear the screams and feel the smell of the burning human flesh. I wonder if you saw the tape that Al-Jazeera put right after the war where 3 prisoners were wrapped with dynamite to be blasted in a bloody party so that the barbarians can enjoy their revenge.

Thursday, April 01, 2004
http://iraq-iraqis.blogspot.com/
I was about to publish a new article to the website when I noticed about the attack in Faloja. So I stopped and couldn’t do any thing till this morning, honestly because I was so shamed and didn’t know what to say, I even didn’t want to open my website today so I wont read any comments about it, I was afraid that people would think that all Iraqis are savages. But let me tell you this, the people who stood there even to watch what’s going on are not human. It’s really difficult to describe what I felt, but I will try. I felt anger, disgust, terror, depressed, pain in stomach, and even guilt, I am sure I wasn’t thinking clear so I waited a while before I left back home.

But Now I know that I want to tell the world that me and the Iraqi people I know and those whom I saw since yesterday all shamed of what happened and refuse it and want to do something to stop things like that. Of course we need the help of the coalition to do so but we will do our best.

I used to think that when the coalition forces ends their duties in Iraq, then the Iraqis are ready to take over, but now I am sure that we will need the coalition forces with us for a long time, because I am sure if I or any other Iraqi was in that car, then we would face the same ……..end……. Those who did what happened in Faloja yesterday will not spare any life Iraqi or American, man or woman, a grownup or a child. I wish the IPs with help of coalition forces and the photos of what happened which shows the faces of many people involved would take fast steps to arrest all the people involved to face justice.

[Valin]

If somebody wants to kill you, as these people have shown is their goal,

Who are "these people"? Bear in mind that there are 400,000 people in Fallujah.

First, in Saddam Hussein's world, nobody would have the balls to attack him or his loved ones the way these savages attacked and mutilated the four Americans. Saddam was a savage and ruled by doing this type of thing to innocent people, to ensure that nobody would have the balls to try similar with him and his people.
Once again I ask Do you think this is the kind of response we should use? Remember why we are in Iraq, what we are doing there, and what the goal is.

[tgslTakoma]

I think I already answered the question a couple of times; no need to repeat myself.

I'm not an advisor to the administration or the Pentagon though, so nobody needs to worry.

:-)

[Humidston]

>>Iraq's interim Governing Council denounced the killings as a "savage" act that did not represent the Iraqi people.<<

....Liars.

[Capt. Tom]

What about the murders? Do you have no condemnation of the murders?

Killing infidels is not a problem. In fact it is encouraged. The problem is mutilating the corpses.

You probably weren't around in WW11. Most people weren't all that upset about the Jews getting killed. The problem for the Germans was they made lampshades out of their skin and that is a no no. - tom