An anonymous tape.

Last Monday, while I was in Basra watching TV in the afternoon, Al-Fayhaa channel broadcasted a film they said it was sent to the station via e-mail. I have to say that the credibility of the film is questionable but since I found that no one in the media, whether inside or outside Iraq commented on it, I decided to tell you about it and perhaps we could together find some answers.

The film was taped on July 11 this year as written on the screen and it showed six young men, all Iraqi as there looks and accent showed, and they were reading written confessions about attacks they launched against Iraqis and coalition troops.
All those six men (the youngest is 21 years old) mentioned that they were given orders from the “Association of Muslim Scholars” to perform certain operations against “Iraqi collaborators”, multinational troops and some moderate She’at clerics. One of the men said that he received (350 000 ID) from a member of the association to assassinate a She’at cleric and when the first attempt failed, he was ordered to try again as he stated.

One of those men claimed that their operations were planned in coordination with other groups of militants, namely “Khalid’s legion” and “ Ansar Al-Sunna Army” and then he started to list the operations they were involved in and I could count about 15 or so different operations among which there was the murder of the American contractors and mutilating their bodies in Fallujah months ago.
Al-Fayhaa stressed that the film was sent anonymously, and there was no way to identify the authority that captured those men and made them read those confessions and there’s also no explanation why this record was kept hidden for about 3 months before it reached the media.

It was obvious that the (frame) of the confessions was prepared by the capturing authority because the structure was the same in all six confessions which all ended with a plea for forgiveness from the law.
The whole story could be made up to provoke a sectarian conflict among Iraqis but there’s a weak possibility for this tape to be faked because the six men started their confessions by telling their full names and full addresses (they were all from Baghdad and from the neighborhoods around Haifa street) so I think it would be easy to verify these information.

Could it be that those men were captured by the Iraqi security forces and someone somehow managed to steal a copy? But why don’t we see anything done about it till now? Why the government kept it hidden all this time?
The most acceptable theory is that it was sent from a non-governmental authority, like one of the major parties for example, which have militias and are probably able to identify and capture gangs.

Anyway, such parties are part of the interim government and there should be some kind of coordination between the parties and the government’s systems but till now, nothing indicates that the government is aware of this issue. Maybe the government is waiting for the right time to take action or trying to gather more evidence and verify the information in the tape.

Most Iraqis and I’m one of them do not need more evidence to believe that this organization is a part of the terror network in Iraq, as they have been very generous in providing us with one proof after the other of their willingness to destroy Iraq and their longing for Saddam’s days and their rejection and fear from the ongoing democratic process in Iraq. However and even if the tape was a false one, I think it’s past due for a serious and thorough investigation to be carried out.