Councilor takes up Iraq issue

A Boston city councilor distributed graphic photographs yesterday that he said showed US soldiers raping Iraqi women.

Holding a news conference with activist Sadiki Kambon in the wake of congressional hearings over incendiary photographs of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, City Councilor Chuck Turner said, "The American people have a right and responsibility to see the pictures."

The images, depicting men in camouflage uniforms having sex with unidentified women, bear no characteristics that would prove the men are US soldiers or that the women are Iraqis. And there is nothing apparent in the images showing they were taken in Iraq. Unlike the photographs widely publicized last week, the images appear to have been taken outdoors in a sandy area with hills in the background.

Kambon, who is director of the Black Community Information Center, said at the news conference that he received the photographs by e-mail from Akbar Muhammad, a representative for the Nation of Islam.

A woman who answered the phone at Nation of Islam's US headquarters in Chicago declined to give further information about the photographs, Muhammad, or his whereabouts. Local Nation of Islam minister Don Muhammad did not return messages left at his place of business.

A spokesman for the US Department of Defense, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Yoswa, said the department could not confirm the authenticity of the photographs.

"I would caution that there are many fake photos circulating on the Internet," Yoswa said.

Turner and Kambon said they don't know where or when the photos they distributed yesterday were taken. But Turner said they came from a "very legitimate person."

"We cannot document their authenticity," he told reporters. "But you have the ability to do that."

Turner said he and Kambon were distributing the photos to force the Bush administration to release additional documentation of abuses, which Turner said are not limited to the prison, which is west of Baghdad.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com