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?

[Marine_Uncle]

Don't bust a blood vessel over this. If this is an accurate report, and if it turns out as some of us strongly suspect a bunch of fabrications where reported early on, then if anything it will perhaps close this case against the Marines.
We continue to have very little info as to why any of those Marines are being checked out, other then alleged crimes. Surely our military court is not going to let some crap effect the outcome if it becomes verifiable that this is all a fabrication.
We still have no idea as to why these Marines where taken off active duty. They may not be charged with anything in the end.

[GeronL]

Aha.... that is interesting... fodder for the show David?

[SevenMinusOne]

My bigger question is why aren't the world's headlines condemning terrorist attacks killing civies day in and day out? Sure they report on them, usually to make it appear they are winning, but if they are so concerned about civilian deaths, why the f**k don't they try shaming the terrorists with 24/7 headline like they are trying to do to the Marines?

Answer: They are on the terrorists side. We are due for a revolution.

You have it exactly right - the MSM in this country is evil - A segment of them are truly evil anymore (the decision makers) - the rest are simply pathetic -

[Sam Hill]

Some more details about al-Mashhadani's first arrest last year, from the National Press Photographers Association:

NPPA Calls For Answers From U.S. Military, Release Of Journalists Held Without Charges

DURHAM, NC (August 31, 2005) – The National Press Photographers Association joins with the Committee To Protect Journalists, the Reuters News Agency and other media and press freedom organizations in urging the United States military to explain immediately why it is holding in custody Iraqi photojournalist Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani, a freelance photojournalist who works for Reuters,..

Reuters photojournalist al-Mashhadani is still being held more than two weeks after his arrest. Reuters reports today that a “secret tribunal” has ordered him held, without charges, in Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison for up to 6 months when his case may be reviewed again.

Reuters quotes a military spokesperson who said the tribunal decided that the photojournalist is, in their opinion, “a threat to the people of Iraq.” Reuters says the military will not tell them why the photojournalist is being held and has refused all requests to detail their suspicions about Mashhadani, or to make any specific accusations. The military response to a demand for his release is that he’s “a security detainee with links to insurgents.”

“Reuters is extremely concerned by this development and is calling for the U.S. military to release al-Mashhadani or to publicly air their case against him,” Stephen Naru, the global head of media relations for Reuters, told NPPA this morning.

Additionally, the U.S. military has confirmed that five journalists for major news organizations are now in detention, including al-Mashhadani and another freelance photojournalist who works for Reuters, as well as a CBS cameraman.

Reuters journalist al-Mashhadani was arrested by U.S. troops on August 8 after a search of his Ramadi, Iraq, home; the military has refused to say why he is being held and there are no charges against him. His brother was detained with him and then released, and he says al-Mashhadani was arrested after they looked at images on his cameras…

“We’re extremely concerned when someone like al-Mashhadani, an accredited photojournalist working for a global news agency, can be held incommunicado since his arrest many days ago and simply held without any explanation,” NPPA president Alicia Wagner Calzada said today…

“Also of grave concern to us are reports from his family that Marines arrested him after finding video and still images during a routine sweep of his neighborhood,” Calzada said. “Reuters says they have provided U.S. officials with samples of Mashhadani’s published work to help establish that the video and still images on his cameras and computers that were found during the search were gathered in the course of his employment. We are disturbed by the appearance that the U.S. military is engaged in summarily arresting journalists in Iraq for simply being journalists, and that a photojournalist would be considered a threat for merely possessing newsworthy images.

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2005/08/iraq.html

I’ve searched high and low, and while Mr. al-Mashhadani’s brother is often mentioned, his name is never given. It would be interesting to find what it is.

[boxerblues]

yoohoo get a load of this

[cardinal4]

I think the Muslims are lying.

Me, too, their lips are moving..

[Mo1]

I'm waiting for the report from the military

But I will say .. this video and how it came about smells funny

How do we know it was made on the day of this incident and how do we know they weren't shot by the terrorists?

[ohioWfan]

Whoaaa..........baby!

Did CBSABCNBCCNN have this little tidbit as a headline tonight??

[usmcobra]

I wonder what Ali al-Mashhadani did before the war, Iraqi Ministry of Information perhaps? Baghdad Bob's man in Haditha?

[mystery-ak]

I want the bodies dug up, I want a ballistic test...

[jwalsh07]

I want to know if these people knew about the IED. If they did and said nothing then they are complicit.

[boxerblues]

Did CBSABCNBCCNN have this little tidbit as a headline tonight??

lol havent seen it yet

[mystery-ak]

I've read reports that kids do exactly that....stand by houses and wait for the troops to arrive and notify the terrorists....

[Mo1]

Yep

If this turns out to be a bogus story by the media .. there will be hell to pay

[veronica]

Great stuff, as always. Keep up the good work!

[mystery-ak]

Damn...Fox News alert....7 Marines and 1 sailor to be charged with murder tomorrow re another incident in April....

[Sam Hill]

Thanks.

Anybody with Lexis-Nexus out there could maybe turn up the brother and Ali's relationship (if any) to the "human rights group."

Also, probably more details about the original arrest. And his second arrest.

It sure is fishy.

[tgslTakoma]

If this was an American murder investigation (hey wait, it is) they would exhume the bodies. Good comment.

I don't trust Reuters. Or Time.

[pointsal]

ping

[Para-Ord.45]

ping