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June 8, 2005 Special Dispatch No. 918

British MP George Galloway on Al-Jazeera: Calls for Bush, Blair, Koizumi, and Berlusconi to Stand Trial

June 8, 2005
Special Dispatch No. 918

On June 1, 2005, British MP George Galloway appeared on Al-Jazeera discussing his recent visit to Washington. [To View this clip, visit http://memritv.org/clip/en/697.htm]. Additionally, he appeared on Abu Dhabi TV on November 20, 2004 and stated among other things the "U.S. and British governments will burn in 'Hell-Fires.'" [To view this clip, visit http://memritv.org/clip/en/372.htm]. The following are transcripts from the interviews:

Al-Jazeera Interview

"I am speaking for tens of millions, and maybe more, around the world, who know the truth about Iraq. Who know that the real criminals are in Washington. Not in the United Nations. The real criminals are in the White House, not in the Elysee Palace. The real criminals are in the Congress, not in the anti-war movement. So I have no respect for this...

"This is one of the reasons why we need Al-Jazeera in English, so that we can reach the people who, if you can reach them, you can win their hearts. They are not bad people. The American people are not bad or evil people. But they are ruled by bad people.

"Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolph Hitler. It has killed far more people than George Bush. The economic system which these people support, which leaves most of the people in the world hungry, and without clean water to drink. So we're going to put them on trial, the leaders, when they come. They think they're coming for a holiday in a beautiful country called Scotland; in fact, they're coming to their trial.

"I can't mention, I'm sorry to say, any Arab leader... Where is the Nasser? Where is the Arab leader who will stand up and tell these people the truth? This is what we are waiting for.

"We want to make reparation to the Palestinian people for the crimes of Balfour which were committed in the building behind me, when one person, on behalf of one country, promised a second people the lands of a third people - the Palestinians. We are determined that we should stop the privatization of basic services of the British people. We are determined to defend the liberty of the British people which is being taken away day by day under the name of anti-terrorism. Ancient freedoms, which we had for hundreds of years, are being taken away from us under the name of the war on terror, when the real big terrorists are the governments of Britain and the United States. They are the real rogue states breaking international law, invading other people's countries, killing their children in the name of anti-terrorism, when in fact, all they're achieving is to make more terrorists in the world, not less, to make the world more dangerous, rather than less. These are our priorities."

Abu-Dhabi TV Interview

George Galloway: "There are elections and elections, there are many Arab presidents who are elected with 99.9, 94.7, 87.4 percent of the vote in elections but nobody believes these elections. They're not real elections and the election that's going to be held in Iraq in January, if it is held at all - and there is a big question mark over that – will not be a real election. How can you have a real election with hundreds of thousands of Crusader soldiers occupying the country, drawing up the electoral law, deciding who is allowed to take part in the elections, and utterly dominating the political life of the country?

"Your guest from Egypt, ludicrously, made a false dichotomy between sovereignty and the presence of having troops in the country. He said there were many Arab countries with foreign troops. Yes, it's true, there are Arab countries with a few thousand troops in barracks somewhere in a base somewhere, and usually they have quite a bit of interference. But the idea you can have a sovereign Iraq with hundreds of thousands of British and American soldiers occupying every part of it and regularly destroying cities... because it didn't finish with Falluja, did it? As soon as they destroyed Falluja they moved to Ramadhi, they to moved Mosul, they were moved anywhere where the Iraqi people are resisting.

"Now, the great people of Egypt are not being blamed in this, sure, not by me, not by your callers. We love the people of Egypt, the beating heart of the Arab world. But there is no doubt that somebody asked Egypt to hold this conference, and this conference does not involve the Iraqi resistance. It involves only the puppet regime imposed by the United States and British governments. So inevitably, the government of Egypt, which has agreed to host this conference, is going to be condemned. And even at this late hour I urge them to cancel it.

"The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered more than a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war will burn in Hell in the hell-fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time. Fallujah is a Guernica, Falluaja is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals. Not the resistance, not anybody else but these criminals who invaded and fell like wolves upon the people of Iraq. And by the way, those Arab regimes which helped them to do it will burn in the same hell-fires."

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