US releases Iraqi photographer after 2 years

[Masami von Weizegger]

A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer working for the Associated Press in Iraq has been freed from US military custody after being held without charge for two years.

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad.

He was smiling and appeared in good health, AP said in a report from the Iraqi capital.

Mr Hussein thanked his colleagues at AP and said that he had spent two years in prison even though he was innocent.

The US military had accused Mr Hussein of working with insurgents in Iraq.

AP has repeatedly denied any improper links and said Mr Hussein was only doing his job as a journalist.

No formal charges were ever filed, the agency said.

The 36-year-old was freed after the US military conducted a review of his status and decided he was no longer a security threat.

That followed a decision by an Iraqi judicial panel that dismissed allegations against Mr Hussein and ordered him released under an amnesty law passed by parliament in February.

On his release at the checkpoint, the photographer was embraced by family members, including his brother and mother and received flowers.

Mr Hussein was seized in Ramadi, capital of the westerly Anbar province, in April 2006, at a time when a Sunni Arab insurgency was raging in the region.

He was part of the AP photo team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

In a statement on Monday announcing that he would be freed, the US military said Mr Hussein was suspected of having possessed bomb-making materials and conspired with insurgents to photograph blasts aimed at security forces.

It said he was not being exonerated.

But US military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner told a news conference in Baghdad he was not aware of any intention to pursue further legal action against Mr Hussein.

Many of the 23,000 detainees in US military custody in Iraq have not been formally charged but remain in jail because the military considers them a security risk.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom watchdog, welcomed Mr Hussein's release but criticised the US military practice of holding journalists without charge in war zones for prolonged periods.

It said it allows the US military to remove journalists from the field, lock them up, and never be compelled to say why.

Two years is a damn long time but I guess he was lucky to 'only' get that. Apparently, he's not exonerated but, hey, they don't intent to pursue legal action. Which just confuses me mightily.

[Enforcer Talen]

Key words being, no longer considered a threat. Iraqis dont get sent to Abu Gharib for crimes as such - they get sent for being security threats, which very often includes crimes. What would happen is we'd get info on a target, or see a person at a firefight, or whatever, and the platoon sgt, JAG officer, Colonel, and interrogaters would come to a consensus on whether he was worth keeping or not.

I remember looking at his papers, though. There was some buzz about releasing him when I was there, so I looked him up. He seemed rather guilty then. Im rather curious why they let him go, myself.

We prolly made him a person of interest and see if he keeps the wrong company. Then we might pick him up again.

[Anguirus]

Guilty of what exactly?

[Thanas]

Ahhh...freedom and democracy is so worth it when it allows you to be held for two fucking years despite never been indicted. Nice that the US military has so very high standards. The fact that this is apparently routine procedure is just sickening. But hey, let's not get carried away. After all, I am sure he was real pleased about the sacrifices the noble US army made when they tossed him in a cell for two years without ever having filed any formal charges at all.

Hooray for copying the Gestapo.

[wautd]

I wonder if they gave him the waterboard treatment as well

[Gil Hamilton]

Key words being, no longer considered a threat. Iraqis dont get sent to Abu Gharib for crimes as such - they get sent for being security threats, which very often includes crimes. What would happen is we'd get info on a target, or see a person at a firefight, or whatever, and the platoon sgt, JAG officer, Colonel, and interrogaters would come to a consensus on whether he was worth keeping or not.

I remember looking at his papers, though. There was some buzz about releasing him when I was there, so I looked him up. He seemed rather guilty then. Im rather curious why they let him go, myself.

We prolly made him a person of interest and see if he keeps the wrong company. Then we might pick him up again.

With respect, how can he be guilty and of what? They didn't charge him with anything with anything in the first place.

[Enforcer Talen]

Key words being, no longer considered a threat. Iraqis dont get sent to Abu Gharib for crimes as such - they get sent for being security threats, which very often includes crimes. What would happen is we'd get info on a target, or see a person at a firefight, or whatever, and the platoon sgt, JAG officer, Colonel, and interrogaters would come to a consensus on whether he was worth keeping or not.

I remember looking at his papers, though. There was some buzz about releasing him when I was there, so I looked him up. He seemed rather guilty then. Im rather curious why they let him go, myself.

We prolly made him a person of interest and see if he keeps the wrong company. Then we might pick him up again.

With respect, how can he be guilty and of what? They didn't charge him with anything with anything in the first place.

Sorry bout the delay, work has been chomping me.

Im going to keep it fairly vague for a couple reasons: his file might still be Secret; I read it two years ago; new information may have come out.

That said.

I was working in Fallujah, so what would happen is, we'd receive sniper fire, IED placement or detonation, things like that. Sometimes we'd have a good idea who it was (we caught one guy who videotaped himself doing it), other times it was a wrong place wrong time kind of thing. So what we would do is have the interpreter talk to them, and the platoon commander. If their body language was off and their story wasnt straight, we might bring them to the next level of detainment, where professional interrogaters would ask them questions. I think we could only could hold them at that level for a week or so, but I wasnt in that section. What would happen there would be more questions, and very often they would get released at that point. If not, we would send them to a higher level, with the same process. Above that would be Abu Graib or another major prison.

I dont think at any level we tried to keep innocent guys. I am aware that during the initial push, the Afghan warlords and the like would hand over piles of peeps and call them terrorists, and we might keep them for a while. By the time I got there, it was more systematic, and Abu Ghraib was doing prisoner releases, so there would be an appeal process if we wanted to keep them.

The actual justice of it is kind of conflicted for me. On the one hand, you are balancing security of troops, which entails a certain "arrest and hold" philisophy. The idea is, hes a threat, so you hold on to him and dont let him go. This differs from civilian justice systems, where its "arrest, and use containment as punishment". The system isnt designed to punish over there as far as I can tell, just hold, because you come looking into it as a security issue. You dont really want them released, because they will start attacking convoys again.

I know for some arrests, they had a defense in Baghdad, and we sent the grunts who arrested them to the courts to make their case. I dont think this happened for every arrest, and I dont know the specifics of why it happened in that one.

Is it a fair trial, civilian USA method? Nah. Its very definitly military tribunal, but we did try our best, had fingerprint kits, had a military lawyer with veto power, etc.

Hope this helped.

[Gil Hamilton]

Well, I appreciate it it, though it only partially answered my question. I suppose you can't really give the details, but you've got to understand how it looks, that if he WERE guilty of something to justify being locked up for two years, then you clearly also have enough to charge him of something. Make this double since the guy was a reporter and it seems really suspicious when the military is throwing a journalist in the hole for two years and then letting him go, but refusing to say what exactly he did. Given the shoddy nature of this war, I can tell you what it really sounds like happened.

So why not charge him with a crime, if he is in fact guilty of one and put all that to rest? If he is guilty something, it would be an entirely fair play.

[Enforcer Talen]

Well, one aspect of this which makes it challenging is Secret level evidence. The methods which intelligence is gathered cant be shown to the public, and that is a lot of what is collected to make target packages. You'll have sattelite photos, UAVs, sniper pictures, or internal reporting from the line companies. I cant think of any of those that would be unclassified, so you'll have Secret level prosecution. If the internal controls (JAG officer, colonel) feel that is sufficient, then he goes higher.

You understand the difficulty of that for your basic justice system is though. How can a lawyer defend a client when the evidence is above his clearance level? Are lawyers allowed to go to secret level locations to meet with detainees for discussion? You'll probably need a cleared interpreter, and those are hard to find. (I am aware of only one at battalion level when we were there).

For myself, I dont find these answers really satisfying; its two modes of thought which conflict, and I think counterinsurgency and the law are going to be big topics as we go along. I was looking at law courses just recently, and a fair number of the classes are on this topic.

[Gil Hamilton]

I see your point there.

That brings up the obvious question of how CAN you have a justice system all if you are arresting people but can't put any evidence against them except for asking people to take your word for the fact that they are bad, bad men. You can't arrest people without a justice system in place and the government (at least the White House) has been very clear that they don't want these people to formally be POWs. In the case of this guy in the article, given that he was an AP Photojournalist, chances are he wasn't some gunman who was stupid enough to attack a convoy and got picked up, whatever he did or if he did anything at all.

This seems to be a rather large problem, since its not real formal war stuff (if there were actually enemy soldiers involved in this, I would imagine that it would be a whole less of a problem) and its not really police work either. With respect, it doesn't seem to me that the government or the military really HAS a legal system prepared for this at all.

[Enforcer Talen]

Not really, no. Like I said, the whole system of law and counterterrorism is still being developed, and the military response is mostly lock them up for the time being. Obviously, this isnt a justice system as such, its a security measure. When someone asks about charges, they arent looking at it at the same angle as a patrol might.

And, youd be surprised who can be an insurgent. Politicians, religious figures, women, children, or your stereotypical uneducated military age male. They arent exactly POWs, because they arent enemy military, and they aren't exactly criminals, and we arent exactly police forces. It adds to the whole dillema of counter insurgency. The military solution to a sniper is often air strikes or artillery, but police wouldnt dream of such a response.

Its a new set of rules.