July 26, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 25, 1424

PARIS, July 25: Editors of European newspapers were split on Friday over whether to publish gruesome pictures of Saddam’s dead sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, and if so whether to use colour and where to put them.

Some splashed the images across their front page in full colour, others declined to use them at all on moral grounds while yet others compromised by printing them on inside pages in black and white. In some cases editors told readers the reasons for their choice.

While Arab newspapers used the pictures freely and sometimes gloatingly, some expressed caution as to whether the pictures were really those of Saddam’s sons.

In France the Le Figaro and the popular Le Parisien put the pictures on inside pages in black and white while the Liberation and the Catholic La Croix did not use them but referred to the controversy prompted by the US decision to release them.

In March, as the Iraq war began, the United States protested against the broadcasting of pictures of US prisoners of war, while the BBC was attacked for showing images of the bodies of two British soldiers who died during the war.

The more uninhibited press in Britain used the pictures of Saddam’s sons without compunction, with most of the more serious broadsheets putting large colour pictures on their front pages — in the case of The Times a close up of Uday’s mutilated eyes and nose across five columns. The Independent masked the images with a commentary.

The tabloid press, with the exception of the Daily Mirror, relegated them to inside pages.

In Germany the tabloid Bild Zeitung put the images both on the front page and inside. The broadsheet Die Welt used small black and white pictures, with the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung used similar but larger images.

The Berliner Zeitung justified its decision with the claim that the pictures were “an important document”. The Tagesspiegel and Frankfurter Rundschau declined to use any pictures arguing they were a “violation of human dignity”.

Italy’s La Stampa and Corriere della Sera put the pictures on their front page. La Repubblica quoted a former international lawyer to the effect that publication was a breach of the Geneva convention. Two leftwing papers published blank spaces and spoke of President Bush’s “war trophies.”

Eight out of nine daily Spanish newspapers had no qualms about using the pictures though a Catalan journal questioned “the polemical media decision of the Pentagon” and asked “if the fact of wanting to convince unbelievers would make up for the humiliation which could be aroused in the Arab world.”

In Sweden both the Dagens Nyheter and the tabloid Aftenposten used the pictures, the first claiming the US decision to publicise them was “understandable”, the second saying its choice was “exceptional”.—AFP