A TV reality show featuring captured terrorists is a big hit in Iraq:
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s hottest new television program is a reality show. But the players are not there by choice. And they don’t win big bucks, a new spouse or a dream job.
Instead, all the characters on “Terrorism in the Hands of Justice” are captured suspected insurgents. And for more than a month, they have been riveting viewers with tales of how they killed, kidnapped, raped or beheaded other Iraqis, usually for a few hundred dollars per victim.
Seated before an Iraqi flag, the dejected and cowed prisoners answer questions from an off-camera inquisitor who mocks their behavior. Some sport bruised faces and black eyes. Far from appearing to be confident heroes battling U.S. occupation, they come across as gangsters.
“I watch the show every night, and I wait for it patiently, because it is very revealing,” said Abdul Kareem Abdulla, 42, a Baghdad shop owner. “For the first time, we saw those who claim to be jihadists as simple $50 murderers who would do everything in the name of Islam. Our religion is too lofty, noble and humane to have such thugs and killers. I wish they would hang them now, and in the same place where they did their crimes. They should never be given any mercy.”
It’s funny what a little truth can do.