http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1518168,00.html
March 10, 2005
Terror confessions on TV grip Baghdad
By Catherine Philp
On-screen admissions are used in the propaganda war
THE grim-faced young man looks shiftily in front of him, glancing from time
to time at the lens recording his discomfort. A disembodied voice barks out:
"Tell us about the crime you committed."
The man clears his throat and begins to mumble. "We attacked the National
Guard with machineguns and killed two of them. Then we beheaded one of
them." He stumbles for a moment, as if forgetting his lines. Then the
interrogator prompts him with more details of his story and he continues
with the tale of how he joined the insurgency and the attacks he carried
out.
This is Terror in the Grip of Justice, the latest television hit in
entertainment-starved Iraq where it is too dangerous to venture out at night
and street life ends at last light. It is also the latest weapon in the
Government's propaganda war against the insurgents, aimed at exposing them
as the enemies of ordinary Iraqis and cautioning those tempted to join them.
Every night at 9pm thousands tune in to the state-run al-Iraqiya channel to
see the "confessions" by insurgents paraded before the camera and
interrogated.
The authorities insist that the confessions are genuine and obtained without
duress, although some of the scripted-sounding accounts suggest otherwise.
The series began several weeks ago with purported Syrian and Egyptian
insurgents admitting that they joined the insurgency after training from
Syrian intelligence.
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