Posted on 07/08/2006 10:06:35 AM PDT by radar101
A Los Angeles filmmaker who was imprisoned in Iraq for 55 days sued Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking military officials Friday, alleging that his detention violated his civil rights, the law of nations and the Geneva Convention.
Mark D. Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, said the suit is the first civil action challenging the constitutionality of the U.S. government's detention and hearing policies in Iraq.
Cyrus Kar, 45, of Los Feliz was freed a year ago, just days after the American Civil Liberties Union sued seeking his release. The new lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, seeks damages for Kar and broad changes in the government's detention policies.
Kar, a U.S. citizen and Navy veteran, went to Iraq 14 months ago to make a documentary film about Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who wrote the world's first human rights charter.
On May 17, 2005, the taxi he was riding in was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint and authorities found components in the trunk that are commonly used in improvised explosive devices. The taxi driver told military authorities that Kar and his cameraman knew nothing about the items, which the driver said he was bringing to his brother-in-law
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
People are getting killed, daily, even hourly! Since you and this "film maker" choose to ignore that fact, all your other whinging is worthless noise. If I had explained that, in 1944, Tokyo was being bombed by the US Army Air Force, would it have clarified things? Silly me, assuming that you know grade school history.
If you don't understand the difference between travelling to an enemy's land during wartime, and travelling to land occupied by the US military and its allies, then I can't help you. Yes, there was an insurgency, but it was not in all towns, and it was certainly not illegal for people to go there and see for themselves. Before the insurgency heated up, you had all kinds of people going to Iraq and travelling around, writing about the experience. You had Iraqi expats returning, journalists (Michael Yon, Mark Steyn), people looking for business opportunities, and this guy, a film maker. You had American contractors all over (remember Fallujah?), and last I heard, no one blamed them for being in Iraq during an insurgency, said they shouldn't have been there, and that if they got picked up and sent to the can for 55 days, it would be their fault.
You didn't answer my question. Why would you expect this guy to sign some agreement regarding his right to tell his story in order to be compensated for being wrongly held?
When you're riding around in a war zone and in a vehicle containing parts for explosive devices used to kill our troops I'm not just going to just take your word that you're innocent.
It only makes sense that you're going to spend some time locked up while they check you out, and that may not be their highest priority while fighting a war.
I think I made clear that I agree with you. I have no problem with them taking him in and investigating. I also agree that other priorities come first. The issue is how long until they need to let this guy go. I said a week, maybe two. Maybe the military has a reason why it took longer; if so they can present it in court. My recollection from the original story was that they kept this guy even after they had been given all kinds of info that he was ok. That's probably why he's bitter.
I think my sentiments are similar to many others who've posted on this trhead. He's in a war zone...he takes his chances. He won't be the first film-maker/journalist held unreasonably, and won't be the last.
I'm not buying into the fact that he is clean. There have been too many instances of media collaborating with the hajis to stage 'events'.
If I'm going to be in a default mode, I'm going to go with our military every time.
The fellow in question should consider a less hazardous and time-consuming line of work.
How does anyone know (yeah, I read eslewhere about your research on this topic) if this wasn't a 'media event' that went wrong?
And speaking of Michael Yon, I'll bet he wouldn't have found himself in this kind of predicament in the first place.
It says in the article that IED parts were found in the trunk. Even though they didn't belong to him, how is anybody to know this without an investigation?
http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/images/Cyrus_Kar.jpg
Cyrus Kar, a 44-year-old part time college professor at the University of Phoenix
Kar grew up along the West Coast after emigrating from Iran
he was arrested along with his Iranian cameraman and the Iraqi taxi driver who admitted owning the timer devices found in the taxi
He began working on a filmed documentary about his namesake Cyrus the Great and visited England, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan for shooting before obtaining permission from the US government to visit Iraq.
On May 17, Kar and his Iranian cameraman hired an Iraqi taxi driver to take them to the outskirts of Baghdad. When they were stopped at a checkpoint, Iraqi police searched the trunk and found a bag of washing machine timers, devices that can be used to set off roadside bombs.
Ms. Kar (his sister), who works for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Africa, said she had discouraged her brother from going to Iraq
Anna Kar, Mr. Kar's sister, said she had spent some time with her brother in Tehran, where their mother lives, about six weeks before he traveled into Iraq. She warned him about the dangers of such a trip, she said, but her fears were no match for his determination to complete filming for a documentary he had been trying to make about the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great.
During the course of his interrogation he was asked many questions about his past, including "did you vote in the last Presidential election?" Cyrus Kar answered that he had. He was then asked "who did you vote for?" Cyrus Kar answered "John Kerry."
"There's a tremendous amount of humiliation that follows that arrest policy, and I strongly believe that one of the major reasons that the insurgency is growing is because when detainees are released, they come out, and they're looking for retribution. …They're angry."
Some might have questioned his decision to visit war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. But Kar, an Iranian-American documentary filmmaker and U.S. citizen, says it was part of a labor of love: to complete his documentary about the ancient Persian King Cyrus the Great.
Kar's documentary took him from Tajikistan through Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. The final piece of the story was to be filmed in Iraq. As an American citizen and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, the 44-year-old filmmaker felt confident about his presence in Iraq and had U.S. officials' permission to film there.
But soon Kar's plan to finish his dream project turned into a terrifying ordeal.
........
Cargo Draws Suspicion
On May 17, Kar and his Iranian cameraman hired an Iraqi taxi driver to take them to the outskirts of Baghdad. When they were stopped at a checkpoint, Iraqi police searched the trunk and found a bag of washing machine timers, devices that can be used to set off roadside bombs.
Kar, his cameraman and the Iraqi driver were all taken to a police station 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Once at the police station, Kar revealed his American citizenship and showed the police his passport and filming permit. When he asked to speak with the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi police said they had contacted the U.S. military.
Military officials say they notified the FBI to begin investigating Kar's case and his possible connection to the devices found in his taxi's trunk. Eventually they concluded the filmmaker and his cameraman had nothing to with the suspicious equipment and both men were released. Officials said the taxi driver was still being held as the investigation continued.
......
As he was transferred to American custody, Kar repeated that he was an American citizen and again asked to speak to the U.S. Embassy.
"And I said, 'Listen, I'm a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. This is how you treat your own?' "
Once at the American detention camp, Kar was placed on the dirt floor, restrained with flexi-cuffs behind his back and left with a blanket and bottle of water. Around 1 a.m. he was led to an interrogation room and photographed.
Kar's group was shackled, blindfolded and driven to Tikrit, in northern Iraq. U.S. officials there decided to take them to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where Kar and his group say they were subjected to violence and humiliation.
"At that point, the punch had been taken out of me," Kar said. "I wasn't responding and he [the interrogator] is pulling me up … and he just got a handful of skin and he's pulling me up. Skin comes loose, shirt rips and they're leading us into a processing area which looked like a lobby.
"Once we're inside the lobby, they make us face the wall, standing this time and they tell us to put our heads up against the wall. My head was about two inches from the wall and so he grabs my head and slams it against the cinderblock."
Kar was taken to another room, but his cameraman was asked to remove his clothes while the assembled group of guards laughed at him.
Kar's Iranian cameraman remained at Abu Ghraib but, as an American citizen, Kar was not allowed to be held there.
...................
"I understand suspicion," Kar says, "I don't understand wanton hostility. And it was wanton."
By the end of his second day of captivity, Kar was taken from Abu Ghraib to the detention camp at the Baghdad airport, Camp Cropper.
After Kar was processed at Camp Cropper, it took several days for the FBI to check out his story, and another 47 days to get a hearing with the military's Detainee Status Board. Even after he was cleared, it was still six more days before he was released.
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Know what???????????
Elementary history.
You're getting there. Look up a map of the Persian empire under Cyrus.
Instead of lawyering-up, playing the pathetic victim and demanding financing for his next cinematic effort, he should fall to his knees and thank the living God that he was picked up by us and not the happy beheaders. Maybe his survivors could have sued the military for not protecting him.
The fact is, when this happened last year, I read about it in the papers, looked into it from a number of sources, and reviewed the summaries of the FBI's report. Everything about the guy checked out. Then it got me to thinking: how would I expect to be treated in the same situation. Suppose I went to Iraq to set up a cell phone system, to be a civilian security provider, to assist the petroleum industry, to report on the current situation outside the green zone (like Mark Steyn did) or to make a film that needs footage from Iraq, like this guy did. I could certainly understand getting caught up by mistake, as happened to this guy, and I would excuse a lot of inconvenience. But I would also expect better treatment from my fellow citizens, respectful treatment once they knew I was a citizen AND a US navy vet, a quick investigation, prompt release upon its conclusion, and maybe even an apology for the inconvenience. If that happened to me, I would be inclined to forget about the whole thing.
But, were I to suffer abuse while imprisoned, unnecessarily have to endure crappy conditions, endure an unreasonably lengthy investigation, and be held for a week even after I was cleared by the FBI, I would be inclined to seek redress for that conduct. I have obtained 6 figure settlements for my clients for far, far less of an outrage--for example, a store security guard wrongfully detains an innocent person for several hours in a basement holding room. Our society values very highly the freedom of its citizens, and before you take someone's liberty for even one minute, you better have a good reason. And even if you initially have a good reason, you better not detain them for one minute longer once you have learned facts that negate the initial suspicions.
And were this to happen to me, I would also be dismayed, but perhaps not surprised, by loudmouth wenches on the internet suggesting that I had it coming. I'd figure that they were just bigoted, or possibly not really patriots, but more like statists, or that they have some other derangement that would explain their desire for me to suffer unwarranted harm.
The lengths people go to justify prior silly statements are just unbelievable sometimes. I saw an Alexander the Great 2 hour documentary on the History Channel recently. They had some stuff from Afghanistan and India in it (and Persia for that matter, Iraq perhaps, too.) Yet Alexander was in those places only a tiny fraction of his life. How silly of those History Channel people to get footage from those places. Don't they know what they're doing?
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