Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist held for 6 months without charges

[giza]

By Tom Curley
The Associated Press

Editor's note: Tom Curley is president and chief executive of the Associated Press. This column first appeared in The Washington Post.

NEW YORK -- Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S. Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither do his AP colleagues.

The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents. So Bilal himself must be one, too, or at least a sympathizer.

It is a measure of just how dangerous and disorienting Iraq has become that suspicions such as these are considered adequate grounds for locking up a man and throwing away the key.

After more than five months of trying to bring Bilal's case into the daylight, AP is now convinced the Army doesn't care whether Bilal is or isn't an insurgent. The Army doesn't have to care. Bilal is off the street, and the military says it doesn't consider itself accountable to any judicial authority that could question his guilt.

The rest of the story can be found on CNN.

There's more to the story than what I quoted above, and it's great reading. The author outlines why getting both sides of the story is very important for current and future historians, and helps keep our government from spinning things their way. It's also pretty daming to the miliary. :-)

Comments

[triggur.livejournal.com]

> the military says it doesn't consider itself accountable to any judicial authority

okay, know what?

At this point, anybody who is NOT tendering their residency/citizenship to another country is FUCKING INSANE. Wake up people... this is the beginning of the end.