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Journalism of Courage
Iraq’s government TV station has broadcast confessions of what it said were Arab and foreign terrorists who infiltrated across the country’s porous borders to fight against US-led coalition forces. The confessions — which were broadcast several times over the weekend — were publicised as US and Iraqi forces were massing around Falluja for an anticipated showdown with fighters in the insurgent stronghold.
The station, Iraqiya, showed 19 Arab men between ages of 20 to 40, lined up against a wall while the camera panned their pale, bearded faces.
An announcer read a statement accusing the prisoners ‘‘of carrying out mass killings, sabotage, inciting sectarianism and racism, destroying the economic and the social infrastructure of our people to take us back to the dark ages’’.
The 19 included five Syrians, five Saudis, four Jordanians, two Egyptians, two Iranians and one Palestinian. Most were said to have entered the country in October 2003 during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Only two of them, however, said they came to join the insurgency in Iraq. One of them said he came from the same town in Jordan as Iraq’s most feared terrorist mastermind, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. —PTI
