Allawi allegedly killed 6 terrorist suspects

Jon Lee Anderson, a reporter for The New Yorker, writes in a recent dossier about Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, that he shot 6 terrorist suspects in a Baghdad prison. The killings took place about a week before Allawi took office in June last year.

The story was first reported last July by Paul McGeough in the Sydney Morning Herald. According two to people who claimed to have witnessed the killings:

[...] the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

[...]

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when the Interior Minister said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. Allawi said that they deserved worse than death - but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."

Beside the Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from Allawi's security team watched this event the latter "in stunned silence".

The story was, of course, denied by Iraqi officials, but rumors about it had persisted ever since.

Now, according to Anderson in The New Yorker:

[...] a well-known former [Jordan] government minister told me that an American official had confirmed that the killings took place, saying to him, “What a mess we’re in—we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another.”

Sick, sick, SICK!

The BBC writes, that a Thai prison plans to introduce webcams on their death-row to show the life of inmates up to the point where they get executed.

A prison in the Thai capital, Bangkok, is planning to broadcast inmates' daily lives, as well as their final moments before execution, live on the internet.

[...]

A spokesman for the Bangkwang prison said the scheme will highlight the risks of drug dealing, which carries the death sentence in Thailand.

Thailand has currently 1000 prisoners on death-row. The video (search for "Inside Prison Video" on the page) is currently not working but is slated to be introduced soon.

The AP has more:

The idea of a "jail-cam" is not original. In Maricopa Country in the U.S. state of Arizona, the local sheriff several years ago installed three cameras feeding live video of a men's holding cell, a booking area and an incoming inmate pat-down area on his Web site. Those seen on the broadcast had not yet been tried.

However, in August last year, a federal appeals panel upheld a lower court's decision to stop the transmissions, after former inmates filed a lawsuit alleging that the use of the cameras amounted to unconstitutional punishment of people who had not been convicted of a crime.

One of the judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the practice "constitutes a level of humiliation that almost anyone would regard as profoundly undesirable."

(Emphasis mine)

Fuck Bush!

Am 23. Februar kommt George "Dubya" Bush nach Mainz. Er ist scheinbar in Berlin nicht mehr willkommen. Der Tagesspiegel schreibt am 17.12.2004:

Da in Berlin mit massiven Protesten gegen Bushs Irakpolitik zu rechnen wäre, sprechen sowohl aus deutscher wie aus amerikanischer Sicht Gründe für ein Treffen außerhalb der Hauptstadt: Bush bleiben TV-Berichte über Großproteste erspart, die Gastgeber müssen nicht durch aufwändige Sicherheitsmaßnahmen ihre Hauptstadt lahmlegen.

In Mainz ist Bush allerdings auch nicht willkommen. BushInMainz.de schreiben auf ihrer Homepage:

Klar ist: es wird massive Proteste geben!
Die Gründe gegen Bush auf die Straße zu gehen sind so vielfältig und verschieden wie wir selbst. Deshalb zählen wir sie hier nicht noch einmal auf. JedeR von uns hat seine eigenen Ansätze Bush und seine Politik zu kritisieren. Wichtig ist aber auch vor der eigenen Haustüre zu kehren. Mit dem Bush-Besuch in Deutschland soll die bisherige Politik der Bush-Regierung malerisch und protestfrei abgesegnet werden. Wer Bush einen freundlichen Empfang in der Provinz bereiten will, billigt auch den Kriegskurs der Bush-Administration.

Ich sag nur: Fuck Bush!

Gibt's übrigens als Sprühvorlage zum Download.