Obama’s Pakistan Embassy Reveals South Asian Strategy

Call it a “Green Zone” for Pakistan and Afghanistan. The United States will spend more than a $1 billion on a brand spanking new embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital, according to McClatchy. It is said scale of the project rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

	An architect’s view of a “village” located inside the sprawling U.S. embassy in Baghdad built by slaves.

The Baghdad embassy was built by slaves. The State Department awarded contracts to First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, a construction firm run by a member of one of the most powerful mercantile families in Kuwait, and the company hired low-paid Asian laborers that lived in crowded quarters, ate substandard food and had little medical care, according to David Phinney, writing for AlterNet. “When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled on the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies,” writes Phinney. First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting held the passports of the laborers so they would not be able to escape. Dozens of migrant workers from Nepal and the Philippines have previously accused First Kuwaiti of pressuring them to work in Iraq under U.S. military contracts against their wishes.

First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting came in seriously behind schedule and over budget on the project. It was plagued by allegations of shoddy construction and safety flaws, McClatchy reported in 2007. None of this was a problem with the United States because the slave-driving shyster company was hired as a subcontractor to build embassies and consulates in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Libreville, Gabon, and Surabaya, Indonesia.

Slaves or near-slaves are employed at the Baghdad fortress-like embassy to tend landscaping and take out the trash. No Iraqis need apply. “Iraqi citizens are not currently able to be vetted so may not work on this contract,” according to a document located by Steve Peacock. “The majority of the employees are expected to be third country nationals.”

It should come as no surprise Iraqis resent the Baghdad embassy. “The presence of a massive U.S. embassy — by far the largest in the world — co-located in the Green Zone with the Iraqi government is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country,” the International Crisis Group, a European-based research group, said in one of its periodic reports on Iraq published in 2006.

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“The message is clear. Indeed, it’s gigantic for all Iraqis, for the entire world to see. A 100 acre compound — ten times the size of the typical U.S. embassy, the size of 80 football fields, six times larger than the UN, the size of Vatican City. The U.S. Embassy Compound, in the middle of Baghdad — the center for U.S. domination of the Middle East and its resources,” writes Kevin Zeese, director of Democracy Rising and a former candidate for the U.S. Senate. “The infrastructure is being put in place for a long-term military presence in Iraq. Unless Americans get tired of footing the growing and expensive bill for occupying Iraq — now at nearly $10 Billion per month — or the Iraqis are able to force the United States to leave it, looks like Baghdad will be the center of operations for the U.S. presence in the Middle East.”

Earlier this week it was reported that the United States plans to stay in Iraq for a decade or more. “Gen George Casey said the world remained ‘dangerous and unpredictable’, and the Pentagon must plan for extended US combat and stability operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan that could deploy 50,000 US military personnel for a decade,” the Telegraph reported on May 27. “His planning envisioned combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained American commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.”

Casey, of course, didn’t mention that the “extremism and terrorism” was largely created by the United States as part of an order out of chaos policy. Earlier this month, Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari said the CIA and his country’s ISI together created the Taliban.

“We should recognize that American tax dollars helped to create the very Taliban government that now wants to destroy us,” Ron Paul noted in 2001. “In the late 1970s and early 80s, the CIA was very involved in the training and funding of various fundamentalist Islamic groups in Afghanistan, some of which later became today’s brutal Taliban government. In fact, the U.S. government admits to giving the groups at least 6 billion dollars in military aid and weaponry, a staggering sum that would be even larger in today’s dollars.”

In order to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda — perennial enemies with shades of Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein, a propaganda fabrication of the Ministry of Truth — the United States will need to stay in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan for the indefinite future. The Taliban and al-Qaeda will be exploited once again in order to accomplish the real objective — the engineered destruction and ultimate balkanization of the Middle East and South and Central Asia at the behest of the New World Order.

It was Obama’s foreign policy guru, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who said the United States must dominate the region in order “to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

By now liberals and Democrats must realize Obama is merely a continuation of Bush and all his insincere anti-war talk and mumbo-jumbo about “change” was a sleight of hand, a parlor trick designed to fool them. Bush and Obama, however, are merely front men for a political order determined to conquer the world through never-ending violence.

More than a million dead Iraqis and the dismantling of Iraqi civil society will serve as a brutal modus that will now be used against Pakistan. Obama’s brand spanking new mega-embassy in Islamabad — complete with slaves and “third-party” servants — will be the center of operations for the dismantling of Pakistan.

The State of Police Force in Pakistan

May 28, 2009 by Asim

As I pan the morning papers, I am sad and angry at what is going on in our country.

Saddened because of the un-necessary loss of life from the suicide bombing of the emergency 15 building in Lahore, where at least 26 people including 14 policemen, 6 army personnel, 6 civilians including a 12 year old boy have lost their lives and scores of others injured by the sheer magnitude of the bomb blast.

This is the seventh major attack to hit the city of Lahore since Jan-2008. The newspaper headlines are screaming bloody murder. This blast has been widely condemned by the Pakistani Leadership as well as the world and the usual statements are being read-out by the Interior Ministry that the perpetrators will be caught.

Angry because the provincial administration including the civilian security apparatus which is mainly the Police have not woken up to the fact that we are in “A State of War”. Their attitude and behaviour which can be best described as callous and casual towards a mortal enemy, which is determined, wily and cunning.

The Punjab government had claimed that it had implemented “strict security measures” to prevent such incidents from repeating after the Liberty and Manawan incidents. It is obvious that this claim has been blown to pieces.

Which brings be back to the attitude and behaviour prevailing amongst the civilian administration including the security apparatus towards security alerts provided by the federal government in the form of written memos in the wake of the ongoing operations in NWFP. Unfortunately neither the provincial government, nor the Punjab Police heeded their advice.

The Police in Pakistan is de-motivated, dis-organised, under paid, terribly corrupt. Not only that the “Elite Force” in the Police is tasked the job of protecting the VVIPs of our country 24/7, leaving the people of this country exposed to the naked aggression of the mortal enemy. Whereas, their prime duty is to provide protection to the common citizens of our country.

These days if you have the chance to venture to the major cantonments located in all major cities, you will see the “heightened security” put in place by the Pakistan Army for obvious reasons.

The civilian administrations of all the provinces along with their security apparatus need to be cognizant of the facts aforementioned and put in place similar security measures to protect the government infrastructure as well as places like malls, parks, shopping centres which are “high risk” targets for these barbarians.

If this means that the local public has to face certain hardships (as if they aren’t already) then so be it. Key roads and thoroughfares need to be blocked-off for general traffic, the Police resources need to be utilised in a fair and equitable manner for the protection of the citizens and the VVIPs. Increase the strength of the Police forces along with proper training in urban warfare to counter the menace of suicide bombings and other attacks. Heightened Intelligence gathering and co-operation amongst all the security agencies and actually taking action on the intelligence and evidence provided.

Lastly change the mind-set and behaviour of our Police. Unless they don’t understand and realise the “dangers within” posed by these so called Muslims, we will be watching the same scenes of carnage repeated (God Forbid) on our television screens.

May Allah provide us with the strength to defeat our enemies!

Ameen!

How a jilted Karachi woman saved Pak N-programme

By Rauf Klasra

As the nation celebrates the eleventh anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests today (May 28), a shocking 30-year-old secret has been exposed. It reveals how a young woman college lecturer, feeling betrayed after a romance with a nuclear scientist of the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), had given a lead to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1978, which in turn had led to the dramatic arrest of 12 Pakistani scientists and engineers, planning to sabotage Pakistan's nuclear sites at the behest of a superpower.

The startling spy ring was exposed by this female college lecturer of a Karachi Memon family to the then head of ISI Sindh Brig Imtiaz Ahmed (Operation Midnight Jackals fame), only because she wanted revenge from her lover for being unfaithful. The expose led to the arrest of Pakistani scientists who were later given

death and life imprisonment sentences by the special tribunal set up by the then president General Ziaul Haq.

Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmed broke his silence of over 30 years to share this amazing operation with The News on the eve of the 11th annual celebration of Pakistan going nuclear. He said that while many people take credit for saving our nuclear programme, no one actually knows how an unsung jilted girl had actually ended up saving Pakistan's nuclear project out of sheer vengeance.

Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmed served as director in charge Internal Security ISI for several years in Islamabad and later director general Intelligence Bureau (IB) in the first government of Nawaz Sharif. The then prime minister Benazir Bhutto had put him in jail for about three years on charges of being part of the operation to oust her in 1989 during her first government. Later, General Musharraf also put him in jail for four years till his acquittal by the Lahore High Court. He is the only spymaster of Pakistan who was jailed for eight years, after serving 15 years in the ISI and the IB.

Brig Imtiaz recalled that as a lieutenant colonel he was posted as chief ISI Sindh in 1978. One day he received a telephone call from the sister of A K Brohi, who was a psychologist in Karachi. She informed him that she was treating a female young patient who was suffering from a disease called "secret concealment" wherein a patient could not be cured unless he or she shared this secret with someone.

The lady doctor had confessed to Brig Imtiaz that she had failed to make the girl reveal the secret and thought maybe he could help her. He then went to meet the woman at the clinic. She was very beautiful and had done her Masters in English Literature and was teaching at a local college.

After some initial talk, the woman finally told him that she was carrying a very dangerous secret with her but made it clear that she would not share it even if she was killed. She told him that she knew very well that the intelligence people were not trustworthy, as they usually use the people and then don't care what had happened to them. Brig Imtiaz told her that if she was not ready to trust him, then he was ready to arrange her meetings with the then DG ISI General Riaz Mohammad (uncle of MNA Shahid Khaqan Abbasi). But, she refused. Brig Imtiaz did not lose heart and told her that he could arrange her meeting with General K M Arif who was then chief of staff to Gen Zia. When she refused again, as a last resort Brig Imtiaz offered to take her to meet President Gen Zia to share this strange secret which had made her life a living hell. But, the woman did not agree to any of these names to share her dangerous secret as she feared she might be killed.

According to Brig Imtiaz, he could have easily picked her up and kept her in a safe house for a few days in isolation to make her reveal the secret but he did not adopt this traditional style of the intelligence officers. For a few days, according to his own version, Brig Imtiaz grappled with the dilemma of whether to wait or to just pick her up and try extracting information through traditional methods.

It was during these days that one day while on his way to Clifton and driving by the consulate of a superpower, he saw a red colour Mazda car bearing a private number plate going inside at a very fast speed but he never really gave it another thought. But later, when he was sitting with the man in Clifton whom he had gone to meet, all of a sudden, his mind started working and he thought of the same red Mazda car and how it was allowed inside the consulate within a few seconds. He immediately ordered his men to stay vigilant outside the consulate and keep a tab on the car when it came out. But the red Mazda did not come out of the consulate building till late at night. Next morning, he went to his office and took out the Karachi metropolitan map and divided it into eight sectors. He gave motorcycles and cars to his ISI people with the directions to keep on roaming in these eight sectors all the time and note the registration numbers of all such red Mazda cars which were very few in those days. This exercise continued for a month but there was no big success. He kept on checking the registration numbers of red Mazda cars but no suspect was found.

One day, he got a red Mazda number which was rented out to someone from a Tariq Road showroom. One Rafique Munshi had rented that car. He had also given his address to the showroom. He was living in Garden East in MPA hostel in a suite. When the credentials of Munshi were checked, Brig Imtiaz came to know that he was working in the KANUPP as an engineer. The brigadier was immediately reminded of the female lecturer and went to meet the Memon lady. He again called the sister of Dr A K Brohi and requested her to arrange a meeting with her patient.

During the meeting, he suddenly asked the lady whether she knew Munshi. As he uttered the name, she started weeping. It took her a while to regain her composure but then she started sharing the secret which she was not ready to share earlier. She admitted that she and Munshi had been class fellows at Karachi University. Both had a serious love affair and he had promised to marry her. She said that they had also developed an illicit sexual relationship. But then he suddenly disappeared from Karachi and she could not trace him anywhere.

After four long years, he suddenly resurfaced in Karachi and was a totally changed man. Before going into hiding, he was a poor guy, but now he was loaded with dollars and leading a luxurious life. She also saw the photograph of a very beautiful foreign girl in his wallet. She then admitted to the brigadier that she was still dating Munshi but felt betrayed and cheated as she believed he had spoiled her life. She told Brig Imtiaz that she was thinking to take revenge from him but then she could not dare because it might have also harmed her.

Then the secret broke. The woman told him that one day, when Munshi left for his office, he left his safe open. She looked at the half-open safe and could not resist the temptation to check its contents. She was startled to see piles of dollars inside along with some official secret files. These papers were related to Pakistan's nuclear sites and installations. This information was enough for Brig Imtiaz to proceed further as he understood the nature of the secret the woman was carrying with her for so many months and becoming sick in the process.

He asked her to help him get a key to Munshi's suite so that he could himself inspect the stuff. She provided him the alternate key. With the help of a 70-year-old key-making expert Brig Imtiaz managed to open the foreign made safe and made copies of documents which were primarily questions and the answers related to Pakistan's nuclear sites and the people working there.

Obviously Engineer Munshi was working for the secret agency of a superpower which used to provide him questions and he used to give them the replies to those questions related to the nuclear programme. This was the same man who was seen taking his red Mazda car inside the foreign consulate. Brig Imtiaz did not touch the dollars and kept putting the documents back after making copies. He now wanted to capture the whole gang, as he came to know through the papers that the agents of this secret agency of a superpower were also present in Kahuta and other important installations where the nuclear programme was being executed.

Munshi was simply playing the role of an agent between the foreign secret agency and Pakistani scientists working at those installations. After a labour of ten months and armed with necessary information, the matter was then brought to the notice of DG ISI Riaz Mohammad.

In the meantime, Brig Imtiaz came to know through those secret communications through papers that Munshi was to meet a foreign secret agent at Hawkes Bay Karachi to hand over some documents. He decided to arrest them red handed. He only took his driver along. When the two were exchanging documents, he tried to arrest them; and to his surprise, the agent shot at him but missed. But he, along with his driver, overpowered them and shifted them to a safe house.

Soon they had the names of 12 other officers at Kahuta and other places who were part of this plan to sabotage the nuclear sites. According to the plot, these nuclear scientists and engineers working on the payroll of a secret agency, were to develop huge technical sabotage of the programme to an extent that it could not have been repaired or fixed for some years to come. They all were arrested from various places in the light of information given by Brig Imtiaz.

It was revealed that actually the foreign secret agency had deputed five handlers from Washington to deal with the nuclear programme of Pakistan. These five foreign handlers included two girls, one of whose photos was seen by the heartbroken girlfriend of Munshi which made her jealous and she decided to take revenge.

Brig Imtiaz was immediately called to Islamabad to give a briefing to General Ziaul Haq The five handlers were immediately told to leave Pakistan and General Zia was said to have called the president of this superpower to register a protest that how his country's secret agency had tried to sabotage Pakistan's nuclear programme. Zia was said to have expressed extreme displeasure over this espionage of nuclear programme. But, the president of that superpower was said to have requested Zia not to make it a public issue as it might tarnish his country's image and Zia obliged him.

A special tribunal was set up to try all those Pakistani scientists and engineers on high treasons charges. The ringleader Munshi was sentenced to death while others were awarded life sentences by the court. But one fine morning, much to his shock, Brig Imtiaz learned that President Zia had commuted the death penalty of Munshi on the recommendation of a top Sindhi leader in exchange for his political support to the Zia regime.

After the arrest of Munshi, Brig Imtiaz met the lady lecture whose tip had led to unfold this international conspiracy against Pakistan nuclear programme. She was devastated and feeling very depressed as she told the ISI officer that she loved Munshi dearly but as he had betrayed her she could not spare him.

The woman had managed to take her revenge from her lover while Brig Imtiaz was happy to unearth such a big conspiracy for which he was later decorated with a Tamgha-e-Basalat by the president of Pakistan for his services to the nation.

Listen, almost 30 years have passed since this incident, but till date I can't forget how a heartbroken woman's commitment to herself to take revenge from her lover had led to the unfolding of this secret, which, if not shared, might have deprived Pakistan of its nuclear assets and we might not be celebrating this day, remarked Brig Imtiaz while lost in the memories of the past.

Barbarians at barbarians' doorstep

By Humayun Gauhar

While divorce is the absolute and undisputed Islamic right of a woman, last month in Ghotki, Sindh, which is not under Taliban control, a jirga ordered that the ears, lips and nose of a woman and her parents to be cut off for demanding divorce on grounds of torture by her husband. Such punishment is completely, totally and utterly un-Islamic and no less horrendous than what the Taliban mete out. Where is the State? Where is the famous independent judiciary? Where are the human rights activists? Where are the lawyers? Where is the media? Where is the civil society? Where are the religious scholars?

Last month in a place called Kala Dhaka, NWFP, also not under Taliban control, a couple was shot dead on the orders of a jirga for the 'sin' of eloping. Is this punishment any less horrendous than what the Taliban mete out? To get married by choice is also the absolute Islamic right of any adult man or woman and no one can stop it, including parents. An English language newspaper reported on its front page: "The jirga was held on the intervention of the political administration to review its order of killing Alia Bibi and Azeemul Haq, but it upheld its decision and they were shot dead." Political Tehsildar Jamshed Khan told: 'I regret the killing, but what can I do. There is no other law except the jirga system in this area'."

No other law? After 62 years? Where's sovereignty? Where is the State? Where is the newly independent judiciary and the rest of the shebang? Why have they not been able to end such barbaric practices? Because jirgas and panchayats have been made part of the system. Parliament should have struck this down for being un-Islamic but it seems that un-Islamic customs take precedence over Islam in this Islamic Republic of ours. It's legalised barbarity is no less than some of the barbaric practices of the Taliban that have been legalised in Swat and Malakand. We don't realise that while the jirgas and panchayats maintain the iniquitous status quo through barbarity, these Taliban too have a limited or no understanding of Islam and use religion as a tool for achieving power. Are we ashamed of tolerating such barbaric practices in the name of custom and for spoiling the name of Islam? No wonder that others consider Muslims barbarians.

Legalised barbarity in our rural and tribal areas has been ignored by us, the privileged, because it never touched us. But now that we imagine that Taliban barbarity might soon arrive at our doorsteps we are going hysterical. You think that such people can change society? All we can do is moan in drawing rooms and groan in seminars, columns, television and blogs wondering why our country is going to hell in a hand basket. We raise all sorts of issues but never our class's barbarity. It's because we are still mentally colonised.

There is slavery in Balochistan, Sindh and southern Punjab. Everyone knows but does nothing. A Sindhi landlord with his brother and son gang-raped the slave wife of his slave together. Rape is bad enough, but have you ever heard of a father and son raping a girl together for God's sake? They are not even Muslims. Tribal warlords and feudal lords own private jails. Everyone knows but does nothing. Feudal barons marry their girls to the Holy Quran to keep wealth in the family, a very high form of blasphemy against the Almighty. Yet our religious scholars make no hue and cry, issue no fatwas. Everyone knows but does nothing. Landlords make usurious loans to their desperate peasants knowing they can never pay back. When they can't, they take their wives and daughters as if they were collateralised chattel, rape them whenever they wish and keep them till the peasant pays, which means never. Usury is a very grave sin in Islam. Everyone knows but does nothing, not even our religious scholars. Instead, we honour those slave owners, usurers, private jail owners and rapists with high offices.

The State and its institutions have been party to all this un-Islamic barbarity, because those who run it are precisely those people who perpetrate this barbarity. We city dwellers too are barbarians because by remaining silent, our time occupied with elitist issues and western concerns, we become party to it. But now that a barbarous group has emerged from among those whom we have perpetrated our own barbarity upon and is about to come knocking on the doors of our mansions and citadels, we the callous and insensitive are going hysterical. It has never dawned upon us that our class was socially engineered by the English to make us mental and intellectual slaves of our colonisers past and present. How could we get rid of slavery in our midst when we are still slaves ourselves regardless of whether we are urban or rural, Oxbridge or uneducated? Now the Taliban will come to 'free' us from our slavery by putting us under their barbarity. Serves us right.

If we urban elite don't perpetrate the same kind of barbarity, we certainly tolerate it in our society by ignoring or mutely accepting it. At the end of the day we are all from the same class, urban or rural doesn't matter. We may not own agricultural lands, fiefs or be tribal chiefs, but if we don't have a flat in London as a holiday home we are not top drawer. Many of us give better food to our dogs than to our servants, who work inordinate hours for a pittance. We steal like mad if in government. We steal like mad outside it. We ignore little boys in bonded labour working all day for a few scraps of food, to be sodomized at night by the camp owner. We tolerate children working in brick kilns, not in some hinterland but in Islamabad. But if our child is deprived of air conditioning we go ape. Workers are thrown into the furnaces of these kilns and steel foundries if they raise their heads.

To make you better understand what I am saying, let me draw your attention to an extract from an address Lord Macaulay gave to the British Parliament on February 2, 1835. "I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."

How did they do that? Macaulay showed the way in his minutes of February 1835: "It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population." Note the phrase "interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern."

These then were the intermediaries between the English coloniser and the natives who helped just a few thousand Englishmen rule such a vast subcontinent for so long. We belong to this engineered class for we are the progeny of these "interpreters" and intermediaries. And we still are interpreters and intermediaries between America and our people for we are still "English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."

The writer is a senior political analyst.

Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.