Tacoma's News Tribune on Al Iraqiya's Mosul studio

Tacoma, Washington's News Tribune profiles the producers at Al Iraqiya's Mosul studio and the Fort Lewis soldiers who guard them.

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Posted by Matthew Burton on May 15, 2005 at 09:06 PM in Al-Iraqiya/Iraqi Media Network, Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (234)

More on interrogations from the Chicago Tribune

"People now realize the terrorists are not all-powerful because they see them on TV being captured," said Udai al-Jubouri, a military engineer whose Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad is among the most dangerous areas of Iraq. "People believe only what they see. The people in the stores and the tea shops who were encouraging these kinds of attacks now do not support them."

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Posted by Matthew Burton on April 17, 2005 at 11:31 PM in Al-Iraqiya/Iraqi Media Network, Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (115)

Washington Post's take on interrogation broadcasts

Broadcast on al-Iraqiya, the state-run network set up by the U.S. occupation authority in 2003, "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" has become one of most effective arrows in the government's counterinsurgency propaganda quiver.

"It has shown the Iraqi people the reality of those insurgents, [that] they are criminals, killers, murderers, thieves," Interior Minister Falah Naqib said last week. More


Posted by Matthew Burton on April 5, 2005 at 03:05 PM in Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (35)

The Guardian on "Grip of Justice"

The Guardian
March 28, 2005
Media: Trial by television: In Iraq, captured rebels are shown confessing live on air.
Rory Carroll

Twenty minutes to showtime and studio technicians are loading the tape for transmission to Baghdad when mortars thud outside. Four hit the lawn, three hit the motorway, carving craters but causing no casualties. The staff resume work, unfazed by the latest assault on the televison station.

Aired twice a day, Terrorism in the Grip of Justice is a popular reality show but those firing 62mm mortars do not like it and have made the Mosul headquarters of the state channel Al-Iraqiya arguably the most dangerous posting in broadcasting.

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Posted by Matthew Burton on March 28, 2005 at 03:12 PM in Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (257)

Interrogation broadcasts expand to "common criminals"

Looking cowed and frightened, a bruised young man looks into the television camera and stammers replies to questions from an unseen interrogator. Yes, he says, he was paid to kidnap foreigners in Baghdad. No, he was not a mujahid (holy warrior); just a common criminal cashing in on Iraq's climate of fear.

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Posted by Matthew Burton on March 24, 2005 at 08:52 PM in Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (21)

Confessions rivet Iraqis - Fight for minds uses a TV show as battleground

The Boston Globe website shows footage of what they describe as "the Iraqi government's slick new propaganda tool". A television show called "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" is Iraq's wildly popular new television hit featureing a nightly parade of men, most with bruised faces, confessing to all kinds of terrorist and criminal acts.

Click here to go to the article and view the footage.

Posted by Vanessa Hetherington on March 22, 2005 at 04:10 PM in Al-Iraqiya/Iraqi Media Network, Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (284)

Iraqi TV Airs Tape of Purported Confession

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)
By MAGGIE MICHAEL

The bearded man in a gray jacket and shirt who appeared on the U.S.-funded Iraqi state television station Wednesday had a stark message about the insurgency - he was a Syrian intelligence officer who helped train people to behead others and build car bombs to attack American and Iraqi troops.

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Posted by Matthew Burton on March 1, 2005 at 11:22 PM in Al-Iraqiya/Iraqi Media Network, Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (152)

Iraqi Police Use Kidnappers' Videos to Fight Crime

Last year, we ran a few articles (see #8-10) on terrorists' use of graphic video tapes as a psychological tool. Iraqi police are now using this tactic to fight back, says this NY Times article:

But this time the videos, which are being broadcast on a local station, carry an altogether different message, juxtaposing images of the masked killers with the cowed men they become once captured.

The broadcast of such videos raises questions about whether they violate legal or treaty obligations about the way opposing fighters are interrogated and how their confessions are made public.

Posted by Matthew Burton on February 5, 2005 at 03:18 PM in Prisoner Confessions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (188)