By: Kian Mokhtari

The UAE Crown Prince's brother, Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan has reaffirmed all the behaviors stereotyped in Western films, media and literature about the basic and cruel nature of dessert dwellers.

A torture scandal has surfaced after a videotape was released showing a man being severely assaulted by “the prince.”

The videotape was smuggled out of the UAE by Bassam Nabulsi, a businessman from Houston, Texas. It shows the prince beating the victim -for starters- with mace like wooden planks with nails protruding from them. The prince then proceeds to pour salt on the man's bleeding wounds.

It does not end there although any civilized person with the slightest notion of compassion would be deeply moved at this stage. It goes on: The videotape clearly shows Sheikh Issa setting fire to “painful” parts of the victim's body. With that out of the way the prince sets about to administer electric shocks to the man with a cattle prod, stuff dirt into the hapless victim's mouth, and to fire live rounds aimed dangerously near him with an automatic rifle. The gruesome routine's images released by ABC News finally begin to draw to a close when Sheikh Issa drives repeatedly over the victim with his luxury Mercedes SUV.

The sound of the man's breaking bones and his heart wrenching pleas for mercy is clearly audible in this scene. The UAE prince responds by asking the camera man to come closer so the audience is not spared any of the brutality demonstrated.

The barbarity in the prince's actions leaves one shaking with nausea and disbelief. The victim was tortured repeatedly on the mere suspicion of “short changing on a grain delivery to Issa's royal ranch” near Abu Dhabi.

We wonder what should be done to the Sheikhdom princes who have been shortchanging their entire Arab populations for decades to pay for weapons they cannot even operate let alone service and maintain.
It has since transpired that the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi has been fully aware of the torture tapes but has failed to take action.

UAE is another one the US' critical allies in its so-called “war on terror.”

The collection of Western backed royalties on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf or UAE, has been awash with allegations of cruelty to foreign workers for years. Tales of physical and sexual abuse committed against migrant workers have been rife.

The UAE Interior Ministry has owned up to Sheikh Issa's sadistic actions but it continues to insist that the incidents recorded in the video tapes are not part of a “pattern of behavior."

However, decades of evidence gathered by humanitarian NGOs strongly suggest otherwise.

But just as the US chose to do nothing about images of Saddam Hussein's generals kicking political prisoners to the ground and shooting them in the head -because the Baghdad regime at the time served as a strategic convenience- the US has chosen to turn a blind eye about the on-going abuse in UAE.

Guess what? The US Navy operates out of a major base near Dubai.
Saddam's regime became a big buyer for Western military hardware in the 1980s, and the UAE is also one of the biggest customers for US weapons, with a $6.9 billion arms deal in 2008.

We are not attempting to forward a political argument against any particular party although it may very much sound like it.
A critical humanitarian question is being ignored: what kind of an objective could be so precious, as to award certain parties the right to inflict misery on such grand scale on fellow human beings, and get away with it?

And how much longer can the Western media cover up for the atrocities being committed all over the world, in the Western public's name, while the Western public itself remains none the wiser?