"...safety of our members - you must make special mention of the Arab station Al-Jezeera. Not sufficient that their station was bombed in Kabul, not sufficient that they were bombed in Baghdad, two further worker at Al-Jezeera are now dead. This war is illegal. Media installations are not military - they are civilian. That is illegal under the Geneva Convention. And Al-Jezeera has been hacked in to - its website has gone off-line - it has been infiltrated, and that too is illegal under the UN convention on freedom for politics, and justice, and reporting..."

"We are here to say that if Iraqi children are old enough to be blown up, we're old enough to protest about it. We can see this is an occupation, not liberation. Its an occupation when they change the national currency to the US dollar... and the Murdoch press say this is a war of liberation - the only people that need liberation is us - we need liberation from the fascist Murdoch press..."

"And if the involvement of school students in this antiwar movement bears any resemblance of what our generation will do in politics, I think we can look forward to a much better world in the future because its the future of this world, our world, that we are fighting to change and that is a future where we dont want war in."

"This is what they are telling us on the telly in the news - its only collateral damage. Would it only be collateral damage if they bombed a school in the middle of London? I dont think so, so its not collateral damage when they do it in Baghdad!"

"Muslims Should Not Cooperate with Foreign Rule"
Imam Khamenei's message to Muslims

Reproduced below is the translation from Arabic of
Imam Seyed Ali Khamenei's second khutbah (speech)
of Friday prayers given on 11 April 2003.

Peace be upon the Muslim brothers and Muslim sisters across the world, especially the wronged and persecuted Iraqi people. The events lived by Iraq these days are extremely important and complicated. The fact of the matter is that the Saddam regime has been overthrown. It was a model of wrongdoing, cruelty and violence and, for many years, it threw the Iraqi people into the prison of its bloody tyranny and despotism. So its overthrow should be a day of historical joy. Nevertheless, the terrible disasters visited upon the people as a result of the American-British attack and the plots being hatched by the attackers to define the future of this people have made this proud and noble people feel bitter and they have also saddened all the Muslims of the world.

"the humiliation of proud men and the shameful acts committed against them in front of their children and wife constitutes a war crime"

The massacres committed against an unarmed people that has found nowhere to go to escape; the cries of bereaved women and the injured; the cries of hungry; injured children left without medical treatment; the demolition of people's homes; the arrest and imprisonment of passers-by under futile pretexts; the disparaging of the sanctity of families; the spreading of widespread terror and fear; the humiliation of proud men and the shameful acts committed against them in front of their children and wife; the destruction of the vital infrastructure of the country; the dropping of thousands of bombs and missiles and the cannon shelling of cities; each of those acts constitutes a war crime and has led the invaders to commit even more crimes than those perpetrated by Saddam over many years.

"there is nothing more hurtful and more bitter for a people than to see foreign soldiers who in a state of drunken stupor enter their homes and lands unimpeded..."

There is nothing more hurtful and more bitter for a people than to see foreign soldiers, who are in a state of drunken stupor because of their victory, enter their homes and lands unimpeded, and take over the control of their destiny. The Americans and the British claim that they have launched this attack of theirs to remove Saddam and establish democracy and freedom in Iraq, but they deliberately turn a blind eye to the fact that they were the ones who had equipped that cruel offender, Saddam. They backed him with everything they had to pave the way for him to perpetrate his cruel and criminal acts.

"The Americans claim that they have launched this attack to remove Saddam and establish democracy and freedom in Iraq, but they deliberately turn a blind eye to the fact that they were the ones who backed him with everything they had to pave the way for him to perpetrate his criminal acts..."

 

They were the ones who had unleashed him to commit the horrendous massacre of 1991. They did not reproach him for what he did and they did not even bat an eye lid. They were the ones who helped him use chemical weapons against the Iranians, and worse still, against the people of Iraq in Halabjah. They turned a blind eye to what he did, and, during the eight-year war he imposed on the Islamic Republic, they backed him and supplied him with weapons and offered to help him to manage the news media.

They had turned a blind eye to all the disasters he had been inflicting on the Iraqi people, day and night. The American and British claim that they are giving freedom to the Iraqi people is a travesty. As a matter of fact, they are acting to secure control of Iraq, its oil and the Middle East and they are trying to suppress the Palestinian intifada. They are also trying to bury the Islamic revival. The appointment of a foreign ruler in Iraq is a humiliation for freedom and popular sovereignty in Iraq. They are scheming to obliterate Iraq's Islamic identity and nationalism and to turn it into a springboard for American domination of all the Middle East and its valuable human and material resources.

 

A US marine replaces the Iraqi flag at the
entrance to Iraq's main port of Umm Qasr
with the Stars and Stripes
and the flag of the Marine Corps.
- the occupation has begun.

"They are scheming to obliterate Iraq's Islamic identity and to turn it into a springboard for American domination..."

Through their valiant resistance, the wronged Palestinian people have deprived their Zionist enemy, who has been shedding their blood and imposing ferocious repression upon them, of its ability to undermine the resistance. Similarly, the faithful and revolutionary Iranian people, through their unity and rectitude, have been able to foil the war of aggression imposed on them by the Saddam regime, which was relying on the assistance of the same America and Britain, as well as of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. They helped the Saddam regime with arms, the news media and politics, but the Iranian people succeeded in preserving their borders - the borders of their country - and driving the enemy out of their borders.

At the hands of this criminal Saddam, the Iranian cities had suffered, for years, from missile attacks and bombs and their self-sacrificing, free youths were hit with chemical bombs. But the resistance of the people explodes the myths of dictatorship, colonialism, repression and aggression.

 

"The invaders have been able to subjugate the Ba'thist regime, and this is what we had expected to happen to a regime that was not protected by its people - a regime that used to rely on organs and elements of repression. However, these invaders will not be able to subdue the Iraqi people..."

The invaders have been able to subjugate the Ba'thist regime, and this is what we had expected to happen to a regime that was not protected by its people - a regime that used to rely on organs and elements of repression. However, these invaders will not be able to subdue the Iraqi people, and if they want to avoid a confrontation with the Iraqi people, then they should evacuate their armies from Iraq immediately, and completely avoid interfering with the destiny of Iraq and its people.

Who rules Iraq is the business of the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi resources and wealth are its property. The Iraqi people are capable of appointing their own future government and if the Americans mean what they said and claimed about democracy, then they should not interfere in Iraqi affairs. In this way, through a general referendum, the Iraqi people themselves will be able to form their future government, elect its officials and define the appropriate method to reconstruct what has been destroyed by these invaders.

 

"The Iraqi people today have a serious responsibility - National Unity and contributing to the formation of an independent government that defends the Islamic identity of Iraq..."

 

The position of the Iranian government and people is clear: We had been at loggerheads with the repressive and criminal regime of Saddam and we have opposed the foreign aggression against Iraq. As far as the war between Saddam on the one hand, and America and Britain on the other, is concerned, we believed that both sides were wrong. We have not given any help to any of them, and we declared our neutrality towards both of them.

However, we will not be neutral in the confrontation between the occupiers and the Iraqi people. The occupier is an aggressor and it should be condemned, and the people against whom an act of aggression has been committed are right and they have been wronged. Our political help goes to every wronged and aggressed people, and this is the line from which we will not deviate.

 

"...we will not be neutral in the confrontation between the occupiers and the Iraqi people..."

 

The Iraqi people today have a serious responsibility, and any abandonment or fragmentation of its position would entail a difficult future for them. National unity, presence in the arena and contributing to the formation of an independent government that defends the Islamic identity of Iraq, are the most important duties of the Iraqi people, especially that of the religious scholars, the intellectuals and the scientific and political elite.

I pray to God to guide our Islamic Ummah to follow the right path of honourable record and piety, to achieve its desired objectives; Almighty God hears prayers; "Work, God, his messenger and the faithful will see what you do" (Quran). I ask for the forgiveness of God for me and for you.

 

To above was the second shorter khutbah , to read the more detailed first khutbah please visit Wilayah Website.

 

"There is one place the americans are protecting in Baghdad with sentries, not a hospital, not a university, not the national museum with its unique treasures from the cradle of civilisation, but the ministry of oil! Does this fact not say a lot about the motives for this illegal war?"

US Troops encouraged and participated in looting

One of the pretexts the US uses to justify its continued occupation of Iraq is to restore law and order. It points to the scenes of looting, ransacking and plundering of government buildings and casts itself in the role of the bringer of rule of law, of order, to a lawless, uncivilised society. Setting aside the racism in such an outlook, and ignoring for the moment the looting of Iraqi oil by the US military, let us examine the facts on the ground.

Initiating the looting

Swedens best selling newspaper Dagens Nyheter [Ole Rothenborg, 11 April 2003.] Interviewed Khaled Bayomi, a researcher at the University of Lund, who travelled from Europe to Baghdad to be a human shield and arrived on the same day that the war began. His eye witness account of the ransacking and looting is quiet revealing:

Khaled Bayomi looks surprised when the American officer on TV complains that they don't have the resources to stop the plundering in Baghdad. "I happened to be right there just as the American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering."

"I had gone to see some friends who live near a dilapidated area just past Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris. It was the 8th of April and the fighting was so intense that I was unable to return to the other side of the river. In the afternoon it became perfectly quiet and four American tanks took places on the edge of the slum area. The soldiers shot two Sudanese guards who stood at their posts outside a local administration building on the other side of Haifa Avenue. Then they blasted apart the doors to the building and from the tanks came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to them. "

"The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road had been shot. But in the strange silence after all the shooting, people gradually became curious. After 45 minutes, the first Baghdad citizens dared to come out. Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the building."

"The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the plundering continued there".

"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The next morning the plundering spread to the Modern Museum, which lies a quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds there, one that plundered and one with watched with disgust."

This was not an isolated incident, but rather part of the US policy of occupation as can be deduced from an almost identical incident reported in another city. The BBC reported of the ransacking of Nasiriya's Technical Institute [ "US troops 'encouraged' Iraqi looters", by Jonathan Duffy, BBC News, 6 May 2003] :

When the college called on the patrolling US forces to help, not only did they refuse, some eyewitnesses allege the troops even encouraged the looters to storm the campus.

looted college stands empty

They (US forces) arrived in five vehicles, but refused to ward off the looters. Instead, the soldiers fired several dozen rounds at the college's south wall, says Dr Majeed (the institute's acting dean).

"It was a green light to the looters. It told them 'We are not going to do anything to stop you.'"

Rasool Abdul-Husayn , an unemployed school teacher, says he saw one American signalling the crowd to move in, with a repeated wave of the arm. Another eyewitness, Kareem Khattar, who works in a bread shop across the road from the college, saw the same thing.

"I saw with my own eyes the Americans signal the people to move in and the looters started clapping," says Mr Khattar.

"The Americans waved bye-bye and the looters were clapping. They started looting quickly and when one man came out with an air conditioner an American said to him 'Good, very good'."

Before the war, Nasiriya's technical institute had 2,500 students and taught community health, mechanical and electrical engineering and computing, among other subjects.

Every bit of hard work that went into building up the college, which opened in the early 1980s, was swiftly destroyed. About 100 air conditioning units and 100 computers were stolen. Rooms were torched; the science laboratories wrecked; the main lecture hall looks like a hurricane has passed through it.

In a statement to BBC News Online, Centcom, the United States Central Command in Doha, Qatar, refused to accept responsibility for the event.

This gold plated AK-47 is one of many gold-plated weapons looted by the U.S. military from Iraq and was in a shipment bound for a U.S. military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia when it was intercepted at London's Heathrow Airport.

US soldiers caught stealing £8 million

A gang of US soldiers in Baghdad were caught stealing more than £8m from an Iraqi government safe house. [Sky News on Yahoo April 23 2003] [Andrew Gumbel, Independent 26 April 2003].

Four GIs from the 64th Armoured Division have been charged with taking £600,000 in bundles of $100 notes after uncovering a vast hidden fortune.

Army investigators have now discovered three more aluminium boxes each holding £2.6m in cash which they claim the troops planned to smuggle back to the US, reported the New York Post.

US forces found up to £480m in 37 steel boxes in a walled up cottage close to the Tigris River last Friday. Some of the money has still not been recovered. The names of the disgraced soldiers were not released.

In a separate incident, an Army truck driver responsible for moving some of the money to 3rd Infantry Division headquarters in Baghdad also got sticky fingers and hid $300,000 in a cooler. The missing money was noticed immediately, the driver confessed and the case was solved "within five minutes", Lt Col DeCamp told a reporter from The Washington Post.

US mercenaries caught looting

Gangs of Chalabi's mercenary militia - the "Free Iraqi Forces", armed and in uniform, have been caught looting homes in Baghdad. [The Star (Canada) April 23 2003]:

"Fighters of the group have been caught repeatedly while looting homes..." said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings. Yesterday, soldiers from A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, detained four suspected looters dressed in the group's desert camouflage uniforms and carrying rocket-propelled grenades, Ivings said. Less than an hour later, another patrol found four other fighters - in uniform, but unarmed - carrying away china, glassware and clothing from empty houses, said Sgt. Jason Letterman. They were not held, but were told to cease looting.

The "Free Iraqi Forces" is a mercenary militia that is paid for, trained, uniformed and brought to Iraq by the US military. It takes its orders from US command and its remit is to provide help to US troops. They form the military wing of the US proxy the "Iraqi National Congress" led by Chalabi. Its numbers have recently been expanded to include ex-baathists looking for a new pay master. The US military is responsible for the actions and crimes committed by its mercenary army.

One of the paintings to have survived the looting.
At least 15 paintings were stolen by one
American Fox News employee!

US journalists guilty of looting

Its surprising that American journalists managed to find the time to produce the reports on Iraqis looting, as it was revealed recently that many of them participated in the looting! At least five members of the media have already been caught with stolen goods when re-entering the US [CNN, Terry Frieden April 23 2003]. Extracts from a Reuters article by Deborah Charles [April 23 2003]:

U.S. officials say they have charged one Fox News employee and are investigating some returning journalists after seizing 15 paintings, gold-plated guns and other items stolen from Iraq and smuggled into the United States.

Most of the people caught smuggling the items were reporters returning from covering the war in Iraq But the gold-plated weapons were believed to have been looted by a member of the US military and were in a shipment bound for a US military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia.

None of the items seized so far are among the priceless antiquities and art treasures looted from the Iraqi National Museum following the collapse of Saddam's government.

So far only one person has been charged - Benjamin Johnson of Fox News. Inspectors at Dulles International Airport in Virginia searched Johnson's luggage and found 12 Iraqi paintings and undeclared Iraqi bonds. Johnson originally told US officials he had been given the paintings but later said he had stolen several of them from Iraqi presidential palaces and the residence of Saddam's son Uday Hussein. He also bartered with a US soldier for two other paintings.

Johnson gave officials information that led them to stop Boston Herald reporter, Jules Crittenden, when he returned to the United States at Logan International Airport. Officials seized a painting and a wall ornament.

Officials said they had seized paintings and other goods from several other reporters returning through Dulles. They gave no details but said they were still investigating.
.