LEGALITY, THEY BRAYED:

Iraqi Police Use Kidnappers' Videos to Fight Crime (CHRISTINE HAUSER, 2/05/05)

In one scene, the videotape shows three kidnappers with guns and a knife, preparing to behead a helpless man who is gagged and kneeling at their feet.

In the next, it is one of the kidnappers who is in detention, his eyes wide with fear, his lips trembling, as he speaks to his interrogators.

"How do I say this?" says the kidnapper, identified as an Egyptian named Abdel-Qadir Mahmoud, holding back tears. "I am sorry for everything I have done."

In the first week after the elections, the Iraqi Interior Ministry and the Mosul police chief are turning the tables on the insurgency here in the north by using a tactic - videotaped messages - that the insurgents have used time and again as they have terrorized the region with kidnappings and executions.

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.

Freakin' NY Times--go tell the Iraqi people they're being too mean to terrorists.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 5, 2005 09:56 AM