Friday, April 24, 2009

UAE's royal family involved in brute torture: on video...

A video recently smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family torturing a man so cruelly that the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now under pressure to investigate and take action. The footage, obtained by ABC News, shows Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, brother of the country’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed, stuffing sand down the man’s throat, shocking him with an electric cattle prod and, at one point, dousing the man’s testicles in lighter fluid and setting them aflame.

The victim—who is held down through much of the video by a man in police uniform—has been identified as Mohammed Shah Poor, who the Sheikh accused of short changing on a grain delivery to his royal ranch on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. Near the end of the video the victim is shown being run over by the sheikh who is driving an SUV, the sound of bones cracking can be heard.

The UAE government has claimed the torture is not part of a patter involving Sheikh Issa, and that the matter is being settled privately: “By agreeing not to bring formal charges against each other, i.e., theft on the one hand and assault on the other hand,” a spokesman said. But in Washington, the co-chairman of the House Human Rights Commission, Rep. James McGovern, is demanding that Clinton temporarily stop any “funds, training, sales or transfers of equipment or technology, including nuclear” to the UAE until an investigation is completed.

From Macleans.ca

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