The Government of Israel now has complete details on the Anti-Jewish reign of terror in Iraq, including the names of 250 Jews jailed in Baghdad since Yom Kippur. Israel sources in Washington received this information late today in a report indicating unabated atrocities in Iraq.
Three Baghdad policemen–Atta el Masri, Mohammed el Hassan, and Fadel Ahmad–here received promotions for being particularly brutal to Jewish prisoners, it was reported. The report stated that many Jews have been flogged and have had their finger nails extracted by medieval torture methods.
Two Baghdad newspapers, El Yakta and El Istaklal, are featuring stories urging that the Jews are “germs which should be eradicated.” It was also reported that the head of the Jewish Community at Amara, Iraq, has gone out of his mind as a result of beatings and torture.
Meanwhile, the tendency to minimize and question Iraqi pogrom reports persists in diplomatic circles here. This is thought to be due to an official State Department statement earlier this week based on a report from the American Embassy in Baghdad. The report said that things were not nearly as bad in Iraq as Jewish reports indicated and that Jews in custody “are understood to be under charges of having violated specific Iraqi law.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
