Anxious. Powerless.

[poliphilo]

The soldiers involved in roughing up the Iraqi guy on camera are from my son's regiment. At the moment the whole business is at the stage where reporters have to keep using the word "alleged", and there are doubts (not very strong I'd say) about the authenticity of the pictures. Even so the newspapers are saying that arrests are imminent.

I haven't heard from my son in months and I've no idea whether this business touches him in any way. I feel pretty anxious watching the story unfold.

Comments

[ruby-road.livejournal.com]

I'm really uneducated about the military, so please excuse any ignorance.. but are you talking about the thing at Abu-Ghraib? If so, it seems from the media reports here that it was only Americans that were involved, so maybe that means your son isn't connected in any way.?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No. I wish it were true, but this is a separate story. The Daily Mirror broke it the day after the story about Abu-Ghraib. A bunch of British soldiers from my son's regiment (the Queen's Lancashire Regiment) arrested a guy who had been stealing stuff down on the Basra docks then spent the next 8 hours beating him up and otherwise humiliating him. An officer stepped in and delivered a mild reprimand and told the boys to get rid of their prisoner. This they did by throwing him out the back of a moving truck.

Is it true? No-one knows. The photographic evidence is being questioned. Apparently the kit the soldiers are using and wearing is wrong for the Iraq campaign. Also the picture quality is rather better than you'd expect from a soldier's snap-shots and some of the poses look staged.

The Daily Mirror (admittedly a paper with an anti-war agenda) is sticking to its guns and the Royal Military Police are investigating.