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]

How do you know this is the same doctor who verified the wounds?

I haven't gotten any hits with any variations of his name when searching for the so-called Hadtha massacre.

[Velveeta]

This doctor definitely hates the US

Yep, he sure does.

[Velveeta]

The MSM won't be able to ignore the blogs forever. ;-)

[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

Murtha is about to join Lee Harvey Oswald as one of the few "ex-Marines" in history.

[Sam Hill]

Ignore my last question. I found some articles linking him.

[Velveeta]

Dr. Waleed Abdul Khaliq al-Obeidi, the director of Haditha Hospital


The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12471.htm

The chief doctor at Haditha's hospital, Waleed al-Obaidi,
said the victims had bullet wounds in the head and chest.

Use both
Waleed/Walid
Obaidi/Obeidi

There can only be one chief/director at the hospital. ;-)

[Sam Hill]

Haditha Doctor Was Arrested, Hates US Too | Sweetness & Light
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/haditha-doctor-was-arrested-hates-us-too/

I'll post it here at FR, as soon as it is finished.

(And credit you for the tip.)

[daku]

I demand ballistic evidence before I'll even consider the possibility of these charges to be true

[mystery-ak]

WOW...thanks for the info......head shots are usually the result of an execution...AQ style..

[Velveeta]

Cool, I'll be famous.
Everyone will know...Velveeta. :-)

Seriously, kudos to you.
Great job on your find.
It gave me the incentive to dig for something I was trying to recall....which was al Qaida "operating" out of Haditha Hospital.

Herr Director's name then connected up.

[Velveeta]

That's been asked.
The Iraqi's won't allow the bodies to be exhumed.

[Velveeta]

Exactly.

[AliVeritas]

You ask the same questions I did. I heard they were buried and permission wasn't given to exhume (Islam), it would seem they would refuse autopsy... but I have no idea... others have had them. Then I heard they had permission to exhume three bodies before. The key is this guy at the morgue. Funny how this came out a lot later than the incident... January?

How do we know those were the bodies period or if they were shot by Marines if they're in the ground? Any idiot could she there was no IED involved with the bodies... so why would Marines even attempt to lie... about that of all things? Funny how in a lot of accounts many next door neighbors and witnesses lived... as well as one house being skipped... by Marines in a blind rage? I don't think so.

If anyone can find out... the NCIS can. Either Iraq lets them get dug up, or clam. But our own seems to be the problem... sedition, pure and simple. This is used as recruitment of new jihadists and the PC dumbing down of our forces when they really need to be on point now. Many will be killed because of Murtha's mouth; It's not like it wasn't being investigated... even over Memorial Day weekend...

I also find it interesting that the witness said the marine was outside shooting in the house, when supposedly all the bullet holes were inside... and not one outside. s/ Not to mention the IED was blown remotely.

[Just A Nobody]

Got it saved Fred!

Good to see you again.

[pissant]

No they won't. As Dan Rather found out. Did CBS ever retract its story?

[Velveeta]

Cee Bee who?
They are irrelevant.

[pissant]

Not yet. they still have their slanderous garbage picked up by the foreign press. We'll have to keep shovelling.

[Fred Nerks]

Hi there and thanks.

[hipaatwo]

Read this:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1641986/posts?page=82#82

[Sam Hill]

I posted it here too:

Haditha Doctor Was Arrested, Hates US Too
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642075/posts