Haditha Reporter Was Jailed By US, Shares Name With Source

Sweetness & Light ^ | June 1, 2006 | N/A

[Sam Hill]

Given the breathless coverage (actually repetition of the same paltry facts) from our one party media about the civilian deaths in Haditha, I am surprised that we have heard nothing about the curious background of one of the first journalists to report the story.

It turns out he might not have felt the kindliest intentions towards the US, having been imprisoned for five months only weeks before his Haditha scoop.

And, in fact, he has since been detained by the US again, for two weeks -- in fact, being only released today.

From Reuters [excerpted]:

Reuters journalist Ali al-Mashhadani (R), a television cameraman, embraces a colleague in Baghdad January 15, 2006. Mashhadani was released from U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Thursday after 12 days in detention.

Reuters journalist freed in Iraq

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi journalist working for Reuters was released from U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Thursday after 12 days in detention.

Ali al-Mashhadani, 37, was arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi on May 20 when he went to a U.S. base to retrieve Reuters telephones taken from him earlier that week.

He spent five months in U.S. custody last year before being released without charge in January.

Though again no specific allegation or charge was leveled against him, U.S. officials said last week he was held as a security threat. Marines interrogated him intensively about his work as a journalist in the restive Sunni province of Anbar...

As many as seven journalists for international media groups were held by the U.S. military in Iraq at one stage last year. One such journalist, from Ramadi, is currently being held.

Mashhadani, who reports and provides video and pictures, is one of a small number of journalists providing news from Anbar province, where U.S. Marines and Sunni Arab insurgents, including al Qaeda militants, are locked in a fierce conflict...

Among Mashhadani's recent stories was reporting from the town of Haditha in March. Following Time magazine's revelation of accusations that U.S. Marines shot dead 24 civilians there in November, he filmed fresh interviews with local officials and residents that were widely used by international media...

So after five months in prison at the hands of the US, and being released in Janauary, Mr. al-Mashhadani stumbles upon the story of Haditha in March.

Here is al-Mashhadani's original report on Haditha from Reuters [excerpted]:

Iraqi residents say bodies in video from U.S. raid

By Ali al-Mashhadani

Tue 21 Mar 2006

HADITHA, Iraq (Reuters) - A video of civilians who may have been killed by U.S. Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a rampage by U.S. soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and destruction.

A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the Haditha morgue. The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi, said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.

Most residents interviewed by Reuters in Haditha on Tuesday echoed accusations by residents in the video that U.S. Marines attacked houses after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb.

They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did not want to be identified...

Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Baghdad, is in Anbar province, an area that has seen much activity by Sunni Arab insurgents whose campaign to topple the Iraqi government has killed thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians.

On November 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Captain Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that, on the previous day, a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops had killed eight insurgents, he added.

U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead.

TRUCK PILED WITH CORPSES

Time magazine said this week the video of the corpses it provided to the military in January had prompted the revision.

Accusations that American soldiers often kill innocent people have fuelled anger at the occupation among Iraqis over the past three years.

The video given to Reuters shows bodies piled in the back of a white pickup truck outside the morgue. Among them was a girl who appeared to be about three years old...

Some residents blamed U.S. President George W. Bush, former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President Jalal Talabani. "Is this the democracy Allawi, Talabani and Bush are talking about?" one resident asked.

Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani, head of Hammurabi, said U.S. Marines had killed 15 people in Haditha after the roadside bomb attack. The group's Haditha branch said it got the video from a local man.

Mashhadani said he had brought the case to the attention of the United Nations office in Baghdad. "These violations of human rights happen every day in Iraq," he told Reuters...

This account is pretty much the same account that is still being parroted throughout our one party media worldwide now two months later. There are several particulars which are just stated as fact, such as:

U.S. military officials have since confirmed to Reuters that that version of the events of November 19 was wrong and that the 15 civilians were not killed by the blast but were shot dead.

This assertion has been repeated in almost every subsequent account. But I have never seen any confirmation of this from the US military or any named officials.

And what is the relationship if any between this news-making journalist Ali al-Mashhadani, and Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani of Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy?

The latter al-Mashhanis is the person who first brought these "human rights violations" to public attention.

Perhaps al-Mashhadani is a very common name around those parts. (Probably being a kind of tribal or regional descriptor.) But what are the odds?

And how odd it is that Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani just happened to be given a video by an unnamed local. And that he then turned it over to Ali al-Mashhadani who just happens to make videos for Reuters.

And had anyone ever heard of Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy before this?

But even leaving their similar names aside, did Ali al-Mashhadani have an axe to grind against the US after having just been released after being held for five months by the Americans?

Did it color his reporting, which is still the centerpiece of every report we have on the Haditha deaths to date?

[Sam Hill]

Just some things the media didn't think important to tell us.

[Sam Hill]

Odd coincidences ping.

[mystery-ak]

Pay back?

[angkor]

They don't like to have American reporters covering Iraq.

Look what happened to Kevin Sites.

[tobyhill]

"They said the Marines opened fire on houses. "I saw a soldier standing outside a house and he opened fire on the house," said one resident, who did not want to be identified..."

That's a substantial difference than going into houses firing at "point blank" range in a "cold blooded fashion".

[jazusamo]

I wonder how Murtha failed to miss this in his initial trashing of the Marines when he called them cold blooded killers? Maybe his source failed to mention it to him.

[Coop]

Would you rude people PLEASE stop posting inconvenient facts interfering with our cut and dry "cold blooded murder" case?

Thank you. :-p

[RVN Airplane Driver]

Thanks for the post....of course anyone with half a brain knew it was not as the MSM reported....I make that observation having been one who has been there and done that....that's why I know that kerry is a liar in the first degree....

[RVN Airplane Driver]

I wonder how Murtha failed to miss this in his initial trashing of the Marines when he called them cold blooded killers? Maybe his source failed to mention it to him

Folks I truly believe that murtha is in all likelihood as big a liar and phoney as kerry.....it's about time for a FReeper to expose that wanabee....

[tiredoflaundry]

Very interesting!

[RVN Airplane Driver]

Question...has murtha signed his form 180 releasing his records... He smells like a compound coward to me.....

[Recon Dad]

Believe this John Murtha can not and will never attend a Marine reunion again. The folks I have talked to call him a traitor.

[SE Mom]

Well, well, well...

Isn't THIS interesting?

[pissant]

Tahnks Coop.

PING-a-rama

[TXnMA]

Interesting perspective on Haditha -- from (of all places) the Guardian:

The entire article is a good read -- especially the part about morning decapitations being televised -- and on DVDs in the marketplace that afternoon. (These scum claim they have "videotapes"?) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.

That Islamist guerrillas were active in the area was no secret but only now has the extent of their control been revealed. They are the sole authority, running the town's security, administration and communications.

A three-hour drive north from Baghdad, under the nose of an American base, it is a miniature Taliban-like state. Insurgents decide who lives and dies, which salaries get paid, what people wear, what they watch and listen to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...and -- I'd be willing to wager -- what propaganda stories the people tell -- well after the original event...

[2rightsleftcoast]

I think the Muslims are lying. It is their duty as Muslims to lie about the infidel. The little girl knew when the bomb was going to go off. She said that by accident on the CNN report. In her third telling of the story she said she was going to get ready for school and knew the bomb was going to go off so she covered her ears. I think she is living in a houseful of terrorists and they think that is just fine. I do not believe our Marines shot these people point blank. I think they may have our guns, taken from who knows where and they shot these people themselves all for the purpose of this kind of accusation. I know it might sound far fetched but I don't trust the Iraqi's one bit. I am waiting to hear of one of them HELPING our soldiers find the terrorists.

[Alas Babylon!]

Look what happened to Kevin Sites.

Not sure I follow you.

Wasn't he the reporter who filmed a young marine shoot a terrorist captured in a mosque? The whole media made a fuss but it turned out the kid thought he had a bomb?

Are you saying the military doesn't want American reporters in Iraq because they'll try and make them look bad? Too late!

[sono]

PING

[saleman]

This is the guy that the MSM is relying on for their "fair and balanced" coverage of the alleged incident? You have got to be kidding.

I sure don't know exactly what happened but I'm feeling a hell of a lot better now than I did about 2 minutes ago.
OTOH no matter what comes of the investigation, folks that have already made up their minds about the Marines guilt are not going to change their minds. They'll just say the investigation was a whitewash or the same old "fake but true" BS.

[jazusamo]

Amen to exposing Murtha for what he is and there have been many FReepers supporting Diana Irey to help her oust him in November.

DIANA IREY FOR CONGRESS
600 PARK AVENUE
MONONGAHELA, PA 15063
724-258-2300
http://www.irey.com/