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Does anyone have any biographical information on Hajj? Obviously he's of Arabic origin, judging by his name. What is his country of origin? What is his current nationality? And most importantly, any ties to any terrorist groups?

Ethnic profiling? You bet!

I don't know much about him, but I did do an extensive Google search on him yesterday and checked out every link. He appears to work mostly in Lebanon. In the past, he has worked for the AP, in addition to his current (former) Reuters job. When the bloodshed in Lebanon is at a minimum, he also does sports photography. He did extensive work during the Cedar Revolution. He's a respected journalist in Lebanon, as evidenced by the fact that he has given lectures at the Lebanese American University. He also has worked in the Palestinian territories a few years back and helped spread anti-Israeli propaganda. Does this sound familiar?

While perusing the online photo archives of Reuters, I couldn't help but notice that the same corpse of a child was repeatedly photographed with different people carrying it. Was it staged or candid? I really don't know, but deliberate or not, it does give the illusion of additional casualties. Suspicions are raised even further now that IMRA disclosed that two Palestinian children who died in the Rafah procession incident were murdered by Palestinian gunmen and that the IDF photographed the shooting. If you doubt the authenticity of this report, please note that it was first reported in Haaretz by Amir Oren on May 21st. Meanwhile in the oft photographed morgue, a lone child is repeatedly photographed in different locations of the room as he sits over assorted groupings of bodies. A spontaneous photographic opportunity or was it posed for propaganda purposes? .... These are the names of the photographers and photojournalists from AP, Reuters and AFP who covered the action for the Palestinian side of the street in Gaza these past two weeks....Adnan Hajj Ali

Source: http://www.think-israel.org/may04bloged.html via The Jawa.

Does anyone have any biographical information on Hajj?

Lebanese, according to the Reuters press release. Not surprising, since he's in Lebanon. Staff photographers can't be everywhere, so news agencies tend to have local stringers all over the place.

From my point of view, the scandal isn't that the photographer was crooked, but that the clumsy fake made it onto the wire. Looks like the pursuit of greater speed came at the cost of less oversight.