Posted on 11/25/2007 6:05:11 AM PST by ricks_place
NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military's plan to seek a criminal case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges or evidence against him makes a mockery of American democratic principles, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "This is a poor example—and not the first of its kind—of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to share with the Iraqi people," Curley said in a column in The Washington Post.
The U.S. military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a complaint against Bilal Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29.
Military officials have alleged that Hussein, 36, had links to terrorist groups but are refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.
Previously, the military suggested an array of possible lines of investigation, including claims that Hussein offered to provide false identification to a sniper seeking to evade U.S.-led forces, that he possessed bomb-making equipment, and that he took photographs that were synchronized with insurgent blasts.
Hussein, a native of Fallujah, was detained in Ramadi on April 12, 2006.
"We believe Bilal's crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even more of a marked man," Curley wrote.
Hussein was part of the AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005.
A U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said Saturday that Curley's column reflected a "fundamental misunderstanding of the Iraqi court system as well as the detainee process."
Maj. Bradford Leighton said that Hussein's detention without charge was legal under a United Nations mandate, and explained that the case would proceed differently than it would in the U.S. because the Iraqi system follows different procedures and rules about disclosing evidence.
"It's not like our system," said Leighton. "The evidence is presented to a judge and the judge makes the decision whether the case goes forward."
Leighton said that if the first judge decides there is a strong case, he will send it to a three-judge panel for the trial.
An AP investigation of the case compiled last spring and made public Wednesday concluded that the series of accusations against Hussein do not hold up to scrutiny.
Curley said the military has refused to answer questions from Hussein's attorney, former federal prosecutor Paul Gardephe, since announcing its intentions to seek a case against him. The military would not even share the exact date of the hearing, Curley said.
"How is Gardephe to defend Bilal? This affair makes a mockery of the democratic principles of justice and the rule of law that the United States says it is trying to help Iraq establish," Curley said.
Amazing what sort of “Pulitzer Prize winning” photographs you can come up with when you have inside info... And you don’t get inside info from terrorists unless they trust you.
Oh! Well then....
Words fail me sometimes as to the comments made here. I'm not sure meds would help much in some cases.
As far as I’m concerned, the entire AP organization should be in jail.
No right and wrong in your little world, is there.
Just like all innocent people do.
What this moronic AP Chief fails to understand is that his employee, Hussein, is an Iraqi Citizen and is subject to Iraqi laws not American democratic principles. He aided and abetted AQ, an enemy of the Iraqi Gov. that is trying to bring it down. The U.S is just a witness reporting a very high crime!
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