"The Convention stipulated that war deaths should not be mutilated," Ashaal

By Alaa Abul Eneen, IOL Cairo Staff

CAIRO, July 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The U.S. decision to allow TV journalists to film the bodies of what it says of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's two sons was harshly criticized by law experts, human rights advocates and media specialists Friday, July 25.

"The release of the bodies in public acts in contravention of the Second Geneva Convention, which provides protection to the war casualties," international law professor in Cairo university Abdulla Al-Ashaal told IslamOnline.net.

"The Convention stipulated that war deaths should not be mutilated," Ashaal said.

For human rights experts, allowing journalists to air the graphically depicted mangled bodies did not take them by surprise, since the U.S. occupation forces had committed many of such large-scale violations before and after rolling into Baghdad on April 9.

"There is an occupation and a breach of a country's sovereignty – in no accordance with the four of Geneva Conventions," said the head of the Cairo-based National Society for Human Rights Amir Salem.

Salem urged the United States "to make good on its commitments under war laws as long as it considers itself in case of war in Iraq ".

Expected Outrage

In the Arab world, moral prospective of releasing dead bodies in a battered state is almost a taboo given its contradiction with a wide religious belief that death should be treated with sanctity.

"Publishing photos of mutilated corpses is haram (Forbidden), under the Islamic Law or Sharia,” said Mohamed Emara, a  prominent moderate Islamic scholar.

Emara said prophet Mohamed (PBUH) had repeatedly warned against distorting bodies, let alone "taking them on the air as the Americans did".

He cited examples of tolerance in which Prophet Mohamed stood in silence out of respect at a funeral of a man of no acquaintance, in spite of being told by his followers the man was Jewish who hurt Muslims a great deal in his life.

"Posing the brothers' bodies for cameras  is condemned by all cultures and civilizations," he added.

A furious reaction is expected among ordinary people in Muslim countries over showing the photos of Ouday and Qusay regardless of their notoriety.

Televised images of the bodies of Saddam's sons shocked many Arabs, who said it was un-Islamic to exhibit corpses, however much the brothers were loathed, Reuters said.

The agency quoted one Saudi civilian as saying although Uday and Qusay are criminals, "displaying their corpses like this is disgusting and repulsive. America claims it is civilized but is behaving like a thug."

" America always spoils its own image by doing something like this. What is the advantage of showing these bodies? Didn't they think about the humanitarian aspect? About their mother and the rest of their family when they see these images?" asked another civilian in Riyadh .

'Proper' Funeral

Furthermore, however criminal they are, Ouday and Qusay should be given a proper Muslim funeral under the Islamic Law.

"The detested sons of Saddam have the right to be buried according to Islamic ritual, whatever crimes they may have committed in their lifetimes," Ayatollah Bashir Hussein al-Najafi told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"It is a proof of the greatness of Islam and of its spirit of justice," Najafi added.

He said "any desecration of a tomb, even that of a criminal, is considered a violation of Islamic law."

Emara noted that it was contradictory for a country to show grisly pictures of bodies with fatal wounds in spite of an earlier protest when Arab television broadcast pictures of U.S. soldiers killed by Iraqi forces during the invasion in March.

"So utilizing principles within your hands is a sort of Machiavellian by the United states ," Emara added.

When Al-Jazeera aired a video tape of the U.S. bodies wearing bloodstained camouflage uniforms, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the move was a violation of the Geneva conventions.

But on Thursday, Rumsfeld said the decision to release the photos of the bloodied and bruised corpses was difficult, but "I feel it was the right decision and I'm glad I did it."

Divided

"Publishing photos of mutilated corpses is haram (Forbidden) under the Islamic Law”, Emara

Meanwhile, editors of European newspapers were split Friday over whether to publish the gruesome pictures of Saddam's dead sons, and if so whether to use color and where to put them.

Although some splashed the images across their front page in full color, others declined to use them at all on moral grounds.

In France the Le Figaro and the popular Le Parisien put the pictures on inside pages in black and white while the Liberation and the Catholic La Croix did not use them but referred to the controversy prompted by the U.S. decision to release them.

In Germany the tabloid Bild Zeitung put the images both on the front page and inside. The broadsheet Die Welt used small black and white pictures, with the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung used similar but larger images.

Eight out of nine daily Spanish newspapers had no qualms about using the pictures though a Catalan journal questioned "the polemical media decision of the Pentagon" and asked "if the fact of wanting to convince unbelievers would make up for the humiliation which could be aroused in the Arab world."

'Big Difference'

However, the White House defended the decision to release the pictures, rejecting comparisons with Iraq 's wartime photos of slain U.S. soldiers shown by al-Jazeera.

"I think there is a big difference. It is consistent with the Geneva Convention," spokesman Scott McClellan said.

But, with threats to avenge the deaths of the two brothers, whom Washington believes may have been coordinating the anti-U.S. guerrilla-style attacks, there was no sign of letup in the opposition to the U.S. occupation forces.

Many Iraqis said what they rather need is an end to occupation of their oil-rich county and setting up a national representative government at the helm after years of tyranny under Saddam.

Tens of thousands of Shiites converged on the holy city of Najaf to hear firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr rail against the U.S. occupation.

Compounding the problem of the Shiites' emerging protests against the occupation, a group of hooded gunmen describing themselves as Saddam's Fedayeen militia vowed to avenge the deaths of Uday and Qusay in a video broadcast Thursday.

Five U.S soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the raid Tuesday, four of them in the area around Mosul where Uday and Qusay, holed up in a mansion, made their last stand.