The US is STILL "Detaining" AP/Iraqi Photographer With No Charges!!!

[leftchick]

six months later and he is in the "enemy combatant" hell of the new US justice system in Iraq....

:grr:



Santiago Lyon, Associated Press Director of Photography, speaks at the Associated Press Managing Editors conference in New Orleans Friday, Oct. 27, 2006. Behind him is a photograph of detained photographer Bilal Hussein. Hussein is being detained indefinitely by the U.S. military in Iraq.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061027/ap_on_re_us/apme_detained_photographer_5

<snip>

In interviews, the leaders of APME and the American Society of Newspaper Editors shared frustration with the case of Bilal Hussein and said they would urge the Pentagon to release the photographer, who has been held by the military since April, or to provide the AP with justification for his continued detention. The president of the Associated Press Photo Managers, Steve Gonzales, said in an e-mail that his group would sign onto that effort, saying it understands "the necessity of unbiased visual journalism in theaters of conflict."

The AP similarly has called for the military to release the photographer or charge him with a crime.

Hussein was arrested in April and accused, "vaguely," of being a security threat, said Santiago Lyon, the AP's director of photography. The military has said Hussein was in the company of two alleged insurgents. Daniszewski said that when the news cooperative pressed for further details, the best it could learn was that Hussein was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of two journalists by insurgents in Ramadi.

However, Daniszewski said the two journalists were asked by AP about the incident and that they recalled Hussein as a "hero," who helped evacuate them from harm's way.

Lyon said he reviewed Hussein's images and interviewed his colleagues and found nothing to suggest he was doing more than his job in a war zone. The vast majority of images depicts the realities of war, Lyon said, and "may be an inconvenient truth, but a truth nonetheless."

David Zeeck, president of ASNE and executive editor of The News Tribune, of Tacoma, Wash., called Hussein's detention without charges "contrary to American values."

[tom_paine]

1. It's not the US, please don't call Imperial Amerika the United States

These are two different countries. If there were justice, this new country would have it's own flag (Just change the field of blue to a field of black and viola!) and a new national anthem.

The United States, for all it's faults and flaws, was a free nation dedicated to human decency.

Imperial Amerika is just another Soviet Union, standing for nothing, existing to steal from it's own people and from the world. In this Third World Nation, ANYONE can be swept of the streets and die in a filthy cage at the whim of Der Fuhrer.

In Imperial Amerika, ALL citizens are monitored in all ways, regardless whether or not they have done anything wrong.

The United States of America was nothing like that, and stood against those things.

Sorry, it just pisses me off to hear the name of the old United States (1776-2000 RIP) equated with this new third-world empire we live in.

[Roland99]

2. Damn that liberal media, plastering this all over every channel 24/7