Fascism: September 2004 Archives

Huda Alazawi was one of the few women held in solitary in the notorious Iraqi prison. Following her release, she talks for the first time to Luke Harding about her ordeal

Monday September 20, 2004
The Guardian

It began with a phone call. In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant. He was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad well known for its hostility towards the US occupation. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her.

Chris Tryhorn
Monday September 6, 2004

Prout Editor's note: It appears that the Russian news media is now about as censored, restricted and incomplete as the so-called free press in America - the land of so-called freedom and democracy. And certainly American journalists reporting the truth from Iraq are in as great a danger at being shot dead by their own American soldiers as the great Anna Politkovskaya - for daring to write the truth. So once again we need to ask the question: Who are the real terrorists - those who suppress the voice of freedom and dissent, or those who light bombs in order to be heard in the dense jungle of oppression and tyranny of capitalists?
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Alarm bells are ringing in Russian media circles after the alleged poisoning of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the most outspoken critics of Vladimir Putin's policy on Chechnya, and the apparent sacking of the editor of Izvestia today.
Politkovskaya, who writes for the current affairs magazine Novaya Gazeta, was on her way to the siege in Beslan from Moscow when she collapsed mysteriously.