The U.S. Embassy demanded a retraction Wednesday for photographs published in the Egyptian press that it said were faked pictures of American soldiers sexually abusing female prisoners in Iraq. But editors of two of the three publications involved said Wednesday they saw no grounds for a retraction. The editor-in-chief of the third publication, Al-Wafd, was not available. "We have done a thorough investigation of the origin of these photos and have conclusive evidence that they originated on a pornographic Web site," the embassy said in a statement. "They are clearly staged photos, done by actors, as the site itself states."
| But try convincing people now. |
"Their publication needlessly inflames an already heated atmosphere," the statement added, referring to Arab outrage over the revelation last weekend that U.S. soldiers had sexually humiliated male prisoners in Iraq. U.S. authorities have condemned the soldiers' actions and promised to bring them to justice. The editor of the Egyptian weekly Al-Osboa, Mustafa Bakri, dismissed the U.S. Embassy's complaint. His newspaper published at least one photograph of a man, purportedly an American soldier, taking sexual advantage of a woman as one of a series run across three pages on May 3. "We have published, maybe, one picture from the Internet, which was one of several pictures published by the media," Bakri told The Associated Press. "The kind of pictures on CBS made us believe that any other picture is authentic. Now the U.S. Embassy is speaking about pictures that were published only on the Internet. OK, let us agree on what CBS published, aren't they enough?"
| If that's so, why use the fake ones? |
The editor of Al-Mussawar, Makram Mohammed Ahmed, said he was not aware of the U.S. Embassy complaint. This week, his magazine published a picture of a partially naked woman with parts of her body blacked out. Ahmed said he would not rule out that fake pictures were circulating. |