Madam, - I wrote to you recently to express my horror and revulsion at the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and Guantánamo Bay. Nothing can excuse such inhuman and degrading treatment. Please allow me now to condemn the barbaric murder of Nick Berg by depraved Islamic fundamentalists.
It is difficult to find words to describe such evil and viciousness. To think that these utterly degenerate psychopaths could murder this innocent man in such a cruel and inhuman manner and actually put their unspeakable crime on the Internet just beggars belief. One wonders how the poor man's family will ever be able to find any peace after such a monstrous act.
This dreadful crime underlines the sheer barbarity and inhumanity of Islamic fundamentalism with its total disregard for the dignity and sacredness of human life. It seems incredible that these evil people can invoke the name of God to justify such acts of depravity and savagery. What kind of God do they believe in?
It is vitally important that Muslims everywhere condemn such barbaric acts in the strongest possible terms. It is also imperative that those responsible for such sadistic crimes are brought to justice as soon as possible. They are the enemies of reason and civilisation, just as the Nazis were. They live by what Bertrand Russell called "the anti-rational philosophy of the naked will". Their only contribution to the world is one of hatred, destruction, terror, fanaticism and death. - Yours, etc.,
ANTHONY REDMOND,
North Great George's Street,
Dublin 1.
Madam, - The hypocrisy of Messrs Bush and Rumsfeld is breathtaking. They were the duo that gave us Guantanamo Bay where torture was systematically practised. Mr Bush does not apparently seem to know whether it is he or Rumsfeld that is leading the United States. Under Mr Bush's presidency the US has welshed on the International Criminal Court, announced that it will not obey the Geneva Convention on Human Rights and embarked on a systematic programme of torture endorsed from the very top. The least they could do is stop lying and accept that in Europe at any rate the great unwashed public is not too stupid to recognise the truth.
Complaints and reports were made available at the highest levels over the past year from reputable and authoritative sources such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International. I have before me as I write a series of documents which indicate irrefutably that the United States made a practice of exporting victims to third countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt where they were routinely tortured in the presence of CIA agents. To quote a US diplomat reported in the Washington Post: "After September 11th these sort of moves had been occurring all the time. It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on US soil."
I would instance in particular the case of Mr Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was kidnapped from an airplane in JFK, held incommunicado and then despite his protests and without benefit of legal advice placed in shackles by military personnel and put on a private plane and transported to Jordan. Thence he was taken overland to Syria where he was systematically tortured and abused for 10 months. Perhaps Mr Bertie Ahern, who has been pusillanimous in the extreme, will raise the documented cases referred to in reports from the Red Cross and Amnesty when he meets the discredited President Bush at Dromoland Castle next month. - Yours, etc.,
Senator DAVID NORRIS, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.