Michael Theodoulou (left), Times Arabic correspondent, says that the climax of the Muslim holy pilgrimage of haj has distracted attention from the first 24 hours of the abuse court martial in Germany

"The reaction in the Arab and Muslim world has been of shock, and also surprise, because until very recently the British troops were considered to be much better in their conduct in Iraq than the Americans.

"But the strongest stuff so far has come out of London, in the Arabian-language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. There the story has made a front-page picture under a pretty tough headline.

"The editor, Abdelbari Atwan, told me that people are saying the Iraqis have exchanged a 'brutal, barbaric dictatorship for a brutal, barbaric occupation'.

"Across the Arab region, however, the court martial has been mainly run as a news story without those damning headines and opinions. I think the pictures came out too late for the commentators to sharpen their pencils and really get stuck in.

"Interestingly, Arab News, the leading English language paper in Saudi Arabia, has decided against running the story at all. When I spoke to the editor he explained that today's climax of haj means millions of people are praying for peace and he didn't want to inflame passions. He hasn't decided whether to run it at all.

"He said he accepts that it's just a few bad apples. In the same way as Saudi has been tarnished because a number of the bombers in 9/11 were Saudis, he said he was sure that 99 per cent of the British army were better than what he called 'those rats'.

"Al Jazeera, the English-language Arabic TV network, has given the case a lot of coverage but it was still number three on the schedule last night in bulletins, which were led by the latest crackdown in Palestine.

"A lot of this focused on the reaction to the story in Britain, and Al Jazeera seemed quite impressed by the amount of soul-searching it has caused. But there are some cynics who say they assumed this was happening anyway, so where's the story?

"Commentators are saying that there has been a general perception that the Brits were better than the Americans.

"There's revulsion and anger reverberating across this region which will undoubtedly tarnish the British Army.

"But it's fortunate for Britain that it has come at this time and is not yet making the same impact in the Arab world as it has done at home."

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