イラク軍兵士がクウェートにおいて、新生児を死に至らしめていると涙ながらに述べたこの証言により、国際的に反イラク感情とイラクへの批判が高まり、湾岸戦争の引き金ともなった。しかし後に
のちに、ナイラはAl-Ṣabaḥという名前で在米クウェート大使館の娘であることが判明。
[Wikipedia]
ナイラ証言Nayirah testimony
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
The Nayirah testimony was false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old girl who was publicly identified at the time by her first name, Nayirah.
The testimony was widely publicized, and was cited numerous times by United States senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to support Kuwait in the Gulf War.
In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was Al-Ṣabaḥ and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.
Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, which was run by the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti government.
Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.
In her testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, take the incubators, and leave the babies to die.
Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British NGO, which published several independent reports about the killings[3] and testimony from evacuees.
Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country.
An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors ... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die."
Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".
