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ERBIL,
Iraq, July 15 - Each night at 10 p.m. this week,
Kurds in this northern city have gathered in front
of their televisions to watch the videotaped
confessions of a man known simply as Sheik Zana.
A local shopkeeper and mechanical engineer, the
sheik says he and his followers beheaded,
dismembered, gunned down, blackmailed and raped
fellow citizens here in Iraqi Kurdistan for as long
as a decade, until he was found out and arrested.
For months, Arabic-language channels have been
broadcasting confessions of terrorist suspects that
have at once increased ratings and raised suspicions
that the statements may have been coerced or staged.
But Sheik Zana's confessions, delivered in Kurdish,
stand out because he and his followers had a habit
of videotaping not only what appear to be horrific
murders and rapes, but also sex among themselves and
with the young men whom they were trying to recruit
for their cause.
Exactly what that cause may have been is a matter of
debate among regular viewers of the programs. Sheik
Zana has said that he was closely affiliated with
extremist Islamic terrorist groups in Iraq, and that
much of what he did was a kind of training program
intended to produce ruthless killers.
The programs, distributed to television stations by
Kurdish intelligence and security services, are
intended to expose terrorist recruiting tactics and
punch holes in their religious sales pitch.
Even in a heavily edited format that has cut out the
most explicit acts, the images of gay sex are vying
with those of beheadings in attracting the
attention, and revulsion, of viewers. Nadia Mohamad,
49, a government employee who was watching the
program with her husband and children while having
dinner at the Sky Cafe in downtown Erbil on Thursday
night, said the beheading of a terrified youth on
the first program - shown before the sex scenes
began appearing - had literally sickened her.
"The first time I saw it, I vomited, because I
couldn't control myself," Mrs. Mohamad said.
But then, she said, she was almost equally shocked
when the men started stripping and fondling each
other before the scene cut away to Sheik Zana and
about half a dozen of his underlings giving
confessions against blank backdrops. "Sex is
something sacred for us," Mrs. Mohamad said. "But
when we saw them doing that, it becomes
humiliating."
It was hard to find anyone who did not express
outrage at the sex scenes when asked about the
programs this week. "The homosexual part - that's
the worst thing," said Arkan Hamza, 27, who was
having lunch with a friend at the Abu Shahab
Restaurant on Wednesday. During those parts of the
show, he said, members of his family "were very
unhappy and surprised and were speaking at the TV
screen."
Among the elements of the Arabic-language
confessions that some viewers regard as suspicious
are stock admissions by the supposed terrorists that
they are gay. Because gay sex is haram, or
forbidden, in the Koran, some critics have suggested
that the speakers have been induced to make those
statements to embarrass themselves.
None of the earlier statements came with videotaped
sex scenes, but even with the documentary evidence,
the Kurdish confessions have also left some viewers
skeptical. "I don't believe all this," said Miran,
34, an accountant who asked that only his first name
be used. The confession tapes are not continuous,
sometimes jumping from one statement to another, he
noted, with no time stamps on the images.
Still, Fekri Baroshi, a Kurd from Turkey who is a
documentary filmmaker and has watched each
installment closely, said there was no technical
reason to think that the videotapes were
manipulated. He said the only confusing part about
Sheik Zana's group was that their generalized mayhem
did not seem to achieve anything.
"They have done all these bad things for nothing,"
Mr. Baroshi said.
Long a relatively peaceful town in the Kurdish
north, Erbil has endured two deadly suicide bombings
in the past three months, and officials here say
that a security sweep has recently netted members of
six separate terrorist groups. Masrour Barzani,
chief of intelligence for the Kurdistan Democratic
Party, which effectively rules this part of Iraqi
Kurdistan, said many of those arrested would be
giving confessions on the program as part of an
effort to discredit the groups.
As violent as the televised segments are, Mr.
Barzani said, others that have been captured are "so
savage and so disgusting that we cannot even show to
the public all that we have collected."
The respected independent Kurdish newspaper Hawlati
reported Wednesday that investigators had found
compact discs with four hours of video taken by
Sheik Zana and his group of more than a dozen
followers, including scenes of sex with both men and
women. At least one of the women, who may have been
kidnapping victims, is sexually mutilated and killed
in the videos, the newspaper reported.
The broadcast segments began Monday with a
frightened-looking Sheik Zana cowering in a dim,
echoing room and beginning his confession. The
sheik, whose full name is Zana Nasrat Sheik Abdul
Karim, then appeared in a different room looking
much more self-assured and with a full beard that he
did not have in the first segment. He looked into
the camera and said brazenly, "It was very easy to
slaughter people."
A mechanical engineer with air-conditioning
expertise, the sheik was well known in Erbil for
running a sundries market. "We went there sometimes
to buy something with our families," said Binar
Jelal, 18, who was eating ice cream in the Sky Cafe
on Wednesday with two of his friends.
But Sheik Zana had another life, and he now faces
scores of charges including at least two dozen
counts of murder. In separate confessions on the
program, half a dozen of his henchmen fill out the
bloody tale, although there is no narrator or
audible interrogator and the monologues produce a
patchwork storyline at best.
The series has produced little sympathy for the
accused. "We hope there is more of these programs,"
said Mazin, a physician, 35, who asked that only his
first name be used as he conversed through the open
driver's-side window of his BMW in the parking lot
of the Abu Shahab Restaurant.
"Because," Mazin said in English, "people are
thirsty to see the black end of these criminals."
www.nytimes.com
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