All Blog Posts from Public Eye

This Sunday, the Associated Press went public with a call on the Pentagon to either release or bring charges against AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been detained in Iraq for five months. Yesterday, the Pentagon defended its decision to detain Hussein, “asserting that it has authority to imprison him indefinitely without charges because it believes he had improper ties to insurgents,” wrote the AP yesterday. According to the AP on Sunday:

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

"We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," said Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer. "We've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure."

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide -- 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.

Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman told the AP on Monday that “Hussein's detainment indicates that he has strong ties with known insurgents and that he was doing things, involved in activities, that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing."

But AP Associate General Counsel Dave Tomlin said Whitman didn’t address the fact that Bilal has not been provided a trial:

"Mr. Whitman says it would be `up to the central criminal court of Iraq' to charge Bilal with any wrongdoing. But the Iraqi court can't do that until the U.S. military hands over Bilal and whatever evidence they have against him to Iraqi authorities," Tomlin said.

"This is exactly what AP and Bilal are asking for," he said. "If the evidence isn't strong enough to support charges, however, Bilal should be released."

The whole situation brings to mind a similar battle between CBS and the Pentagon over the detention of Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, and it's well worth reading a full account of his story here.

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There is one fact most everyone can agree on: On April 5, 2005, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein was shot. As for the question of why – well, that's where it gets complicated.

Hussein, a 25-year-old Iraqi cameraman working for CBS News, had been spending the day filming a celebration at a university in Mosul, his hometown. Suddenly, as he later reportedly said in testimony, the celebration was interrupted by the sound of an explosion – a car bomb. Hussein called a colleague at a French news agency to find out where the bomb went off. He wanted to film the aftermath, he said. He got the location and jumped in a taxi.

When he got to the scene, Hussein said in the testimony, it was surrounded by American troops. When they cleared out, he went in and started filming. He had only been filming for a short time when people around him started shouting – there were snipers in the area, they shouted. That's when he felt the pain in his thigh. He'd been shot. He went down.

"I tried to stand up, but I couldn't," he testified. Five minutes passed. Then what seemed like good news: The arrival of American troops. They were taking him to the hospital. But the troops did not consider Hussein a friend. They were yelling at him, he said, cursing him. Calling him a terrorist. "I'm a correspondent," Hussein insisted. But the troops did not believe him.

Hussein was taken to a military hospital, where he was treated – and arrested. The film in his camera, the military later said, suggested he might be involved with insurgents. He had been standing with a man waving a gun, they said, a man who was inciting the crowd. Hussein denied it all.

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Around 10 PM Baghdad time last night, Larry Doyle, the CBS News bureau chief in Baghdad, received an email informing him of the trial date for Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, an Iraqi cameraman who had worked for CBS until he was wounded and taken into custody by the U.S. military in April 2005.

Hussein has been held at the Abu Ghraib prison since the incident, though no charges have been made against him publicly. CBS News has been pushing for more information about why Hussein is being held, but has not taken a position on his guilt or innocence. "Our position from the beginning is we're not able to take a position, because we're stymied in finding out what evidence there is against him," says Doyle.

The email Doyle received informed him that Hussein's trial was scheduled to take place the following morning. That would give Hussein's lawyers less than 12 hours to prepare their defense, in the middle of the night, with little idea of the charges that would be brought against him.

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Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal and New York Times told the story of Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, an Iraqi cameraman for CBS News, who has been detained by the U.S. military "for alleged insurgent activity." Hussein had been shot in the thigh by an American sniper while filming in Mosul after a suicide bombing and was taken into custody while recovering.



As the Wall Street Journal notes in a correction to its original story, CBS "hasn't taken the position that it knows" Hussein is innocent. But the network has argued that the U.S. government has not made evidence available of his guilt.



For us, the situation has illuminated the unique challenges faced by Iraqis employed by foreign news organizations.

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