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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Army Nabs Several Suspects as Crackdown on Offenders Continues
2014-11-08
[An Nahar] The army continued on Friday clamping down on offenders across Leb, detaining several suspects linked to terror acts, the military command said in a statement.

An army unit raided Syrian encampments in the Zgharta town of Meryata, arresting ten Syrians who entered the country illegally.

A communique issued by the army said that a unit also confiscated a Mitsubishi Jeep that was used during the latest festivities in the northern coastal city of Tripoli
...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
An explosive detonator was found in the vehicle.

The statement added that the army detained in the town of Abdeh in the northern district of Akkar two Lebanese nationals identified as Mahmoud Moustapha Malas and Mohammed Moustapha Malas over their involvement in a shooting at soldiers in the area.

Bilal Hussein al-Masri was also locked away
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
 in Bhanine on the suspicion of involvement in terror acts, while Mohammed Motasem al-Itr was detained in Tripoli's al-Bohsas for wounding a civilian and a soldier in a shooting.

The army's communique said that the detainees were handed over to the competent authorities.

Several other Syrians were detained in a raid on campsites in the town of Qaroun in the Western Bekaa Valley.

The army has come under growing attacks across Leb by bandidos gunnies who accuse it of colluding with Hizbullah
...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
 in its intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of the regime.

It has been carrying out a major crackdown in the southern city of Sidon, the northern city of Tripoli and Minieh for the past two weeks, in the wake of unprecedented festivities with Islamist bandidos gunnies in Tripoli's old souks and Bab al-Tabbaneh which spread to the nearby town of Bhannine in Minieh.
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Iraq
US military to free AP photographer
2008-04-14
BAGHDAD - The U.S. military says it will release Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein after more than two years in custody. The statement said Hussein will be freed Wednesday now that Iraqi judicial committees have granted him amnesty for all allegations.

Hussein has been in custody since April 12, 2006 when he was detained by U.S. Marines for alleged links to insurgents. The AP and Hussein lie deny any improper links and say he was only doing his job as a journalist.

AP President Tom Curley expressed relief after the statement issued by the military on Monday. "In time we will celebrate Bilal's release. For now, we want him safe and united with his family. While we may never see eye to eye with the U.S. military over this case, it is time for all of us to move on," said Curley.
Bullshit.
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Iraq
Not so Fast, Bilal: US holds AP photographer in Iraq despite amnesty
2008-04-11
The US military will continue to hold an Iraqi news photographer arrested as a "terrorist" until it reviews an Iraqi order granting him amnesty, a spokesman for detainee affairs said on Friday. Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Marshall said the military was awaiting a report from the Iraqi authorities on the amnesty granted to Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein.

Hussein, 36, has been held since he was detained on April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of Baghdad.

The US military accuses the photographer of being a "terrorist media operative" and says he had aroused suspicion because he was often at the scene of insurgent attacks as they occurred. He was detained after marines entered his house in Ramadi to establish a temporary observation post and allegedly found bomb-making materials, insurgent propaganda and a surveillance photograph of a US military installation.

An Iraqi judicial committee on Monday dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Hussein and ordered him released.

Marshall said, however, that the order related only to one charge and that a separate panel was investigating a second charge against the photographer, who was part of an AP photo team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

"An amnesty panel has concluded that one of the charges is covered by amnesty; a separate panel considering the other charge has not yet announced its conclusion," Marshall said in an emailed response to queries from AFP. "Recall that by its own terms, the Amnesty Law does not purport to compel release of detainees in (US) detention facilities," he added.

US officials have said a UN Security Council mandate allows them to keep anyone in custody they believe is a security risk even if an Iraqi judicial body has ordered that prisoner freed.

AP says Hussein is alleged by the US military also to have had contacts with the kidnappers of an Italian citizen, Salvatore Santoro. In December 2004 Hussein photographed Santoro's body with two masked insurgents standing over it with guns. Hussein maintains he was one of three journalists who were stopped at gunpoint by insurgents and taken to see the propped-up body.

After the amnesty committee decision, AP president Tom Curley called on the military to "do the right thing by ending its detention of a journalist who did nothing more than his job."

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the amnesty "could put an end to the nightmare that Bilal Hussein has been living for the past two years." "We urge the US authorities to release him without delay and not to persist in bringing new charges in order to prolong his detention," it said on Thursday.

New York-based Human Rights Watch too appealed for Hussein's release. "The US military held Bilal Hussein for nearly two years without charging, then transferred him to the Iraqi justice system, which apparently sees no reason to detain him," Joe Stork, the group's Middle East director, said in a statement. "It's time to set him free."
It's time for Joe Stork to start suffering yearly tax audits.
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Iraq
Bilal Hussein to be unjugged
2008-04-09
BAGHDAD (AP) - An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him freed after nearly two years in U.S. military custody.

The decision by a four-judge panel says Hussein's case falls under a new amnesty law and orders Iraqi courts to "cease legal proceedings." The ruling says that Hussein should be "immediately" released if no other charges are pending. The ruling is dated Monday but AP's lawyers were not able to thoroughly review it until Wednesday.

AP President Tom Curley is hailing the decision and demands that officials "finally do the right thing" and free Hussein.
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Afghanistan
US military holding Afghan journalist for 'Taliban contacts'
2008-02-20
The US military has been holding an Afghan journalist working with Canadian Television (CTV) for three months because of his professional contacts with Taliban militants, media watchdogs alleged Tuesday. A US military officer at the largest military base at Bagram, north of Kabul, confirmed that the reporter, identified as Jawad Ahmad, was in detention. However, "He is not being detained because he is a journalist," Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta told AFP, refusing to give details of charges.

Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said Ahmad, 22, had been held at Bagram since November 2007. "The US soldiers accused him of having the numbers of Taliban leaders in his mobile phone and of interviewing them," it said in a statement that called on US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to intervene. "The lack of legal procedures and material evidence confirms that his detention is unjustified," it said.

The US military was also holding at least two other journalists -- Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj at its Guantanamo Bay facility and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein in Iraq, the watchdog said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, said separately it was "deeply troubled" by the Ahmad case. His brother, Siddique Ahmad, had said the reporter was arrested apparently because "the US military believed he had contacts with local Taliban leaders and was in possession of a video of Taliban materials," the CPJ said in a statement. "The United States military must explain the reason for his detention and accord him due process. If he is not charged with any crime then he must be released immediately,"
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Iraq
MSM never lets facts cloud their bias
2007-12-18
Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning.

He was held for around 20 months by the military — in Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, with no right to contest his detention — before being turned over to an Iraqi magistrate, who will act as a one-man grand jury and decide if there is enough evidence to link him to the insurgency. He has not been formally charged with a crime.

The Associated Press has staunchly defended Mr. Hussein, pointing out that his role as a journalist involved getting close to the insurgency. Over the last three years, the American military has held at least eight other Iraqi journalists for periods of weeks or month without charges and released them all, apparently unable to find ties to the insurgency, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit organization.

As for Mr. Hussein and his lawyers, “they were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense,” The Associated Press said in a statement last week, noting that Mr. Hussein was still being detained without formal charges. “The Associated Press continues to believe that claims Bilal is involved with insurgent activities are false.”

A spokesman for the military said that Mr. Hussein had been detained as “an imperative security threat” and that he has persistently been “treated fairly, humanely and in accordance with all applicable law.”

In a lengthy e-mail message, the spokesman said that Mr. Hussein had been named by “sources” as having “possessed foreknowledge of an improvised explosive device (I.E.D.) attack” on American and Iraqi forces, “that he was standing next to the I.E.D. triggerman at the time of the attempted attack, and that he conspired with the I.E.D. triggerman to synchronize his photograph with the explosion.”
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Iraq
US defends AP photographer’s detention in Iraq
2007-11-22
BAGHDAD - The US military on Wednesday defended its 19-month detention of an award-winning Associated Press photographer it has accused of working with insurgents in Iraq, saying he remained a “security threat”.

Bilal Hussein, who began working with the news agency in 2004, has been in US military custody in Iraq since he was detained in April 2006 in the city of Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, according to the AP website. Since Hussein’s arrest, “this case has been reviewed a number of times by the standing board that does periodic reviews of individuals in detention,” US military spokesman Major- General Kevin Bergner told a news conference. “In each instance the recommendation was to continue detention because of the continued security threat that he represented.”

Bergner declined to discuss the evidence against Hussein, who took pictures for the AP in western Anbar province, which until a tribal security push began last year was the heartland of Iraq’s Sunni Arab insurgency.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon called Hussein a “terrorist media operative who infiltrated the AP”. Berger said only that Hussein had been detained “as a result of his interactions with insurgent activities”.
Which is how he got all the great photos.
The military has said in the past that Hussein was detained for possessing materials used to make roadside bombs, insurgent propaganda, and a surveillance photo of a coalition installation.

AP president and chief executive officer Tom Curley said this week in a statement: “While we are hopeful that there could be some resolution to Bilal Hussein’s long detention, we have grave concerns that his rights under the law continue to be ignored and even abused.”

Military officials are expected to file a formal complaint against Hussein in Iraq’s Central Criminal Court. “We are now at a point where that case is to be conveyed ... for judicial consideration,” Bergner said.

Hussein, 36, is just one of a number of Iraqi journalists who have been held by the US military without being charged. Reuters journalists have also been detained by the US military for months and later released without charges.
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Iraq
US Plans Case Against AP Photographer
2007-11-19
H/T Drudge
Remember this guy? He was the one that took those pics of the big bomb in Baghdad a few years ago, and AP got an award for it! I remember there was lots of talk about camera angles, etc. (At least I think this is the same guy! May be an assumption of mine. Was quite a dust-up when it happened. Lots of "denying" by the AP
The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against an award-winning Associated Press photographer but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented. An AP attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months.

A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Under Iraqi codes, an investigative magistrate will decide whether there are grounds to try Hussein, 36, who was seized in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on April 12, 2006.

Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP, said the defense for Hussein is being forced to work "totally in the dark."

The military has not yet defined the specific charges against Hussein. Previously, the military has pointed to a range of suspicions that attempt to link him to insurgent activity.

The AP rejects all the allegations and contends it has been blocked by the military from mounting a wide-ranging defense for Hussein, who was part of the AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005.
It's not the AP's responsibility, it's the responsibility of his lawyer. Unless the AP is involved in some way we don't know about.
Soon after Hussein was taken into custody, the AP appealed to the U.S. military to either release him or bring the case to trial—saying there was no evidence to support his detention. However, Tomlin said that the military is now attempting to build a case based on "stale" evidence and testimony that has been discredited. He also noted that the U.S. military investigators who initially handled the case have left the country.

The AP says various accusations have been floated unofficially against Hussein and then apparently been withdrawn with little explanation. Tomlin said the AP has faced chronic difficulties in meeting Hussein at the Camp Cropper detention facility in Baghdad and its own intensive investigations of the case—conducted by a former federal prosecutor, Paul Gardephe—have found no support for allegations that he was anything other than a working journalist in a war zone.

"While we are hopeful that there could be some resolution to Bilal Hussein's long detention, we have grave concerns that his rights under the law continue to be ignored and even abused," said AP President and CEO Tom Curley. "The steps the U.S. military is now taking continue to deny Bilal his right to due process and, in turn, may deny him a chance at a fair trial. The treatment of Bilal represents a miscarriage of the very justice and rule of law that the United States is claiming to help Iraq achieve. At this point, we believe the correct recourse is the immediate release of Bilal."

Calls for his freedom have been backed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Tomlin said it remains unclear what accusations, evidence and possible witnesses will be presented by military prosecutors in Baghdad. "They are telling us nothing ... We are operating totally in the dark," said Tomlin, who added that the military's unfair handling of the case is "playing with a man's future and maybe his life."

Although it's unclear what specific allegations may be presented against Hussein, convictions linked to aiding militants in Iraq could bring the death penalty, said Tomlin.

U.S. military officials in Iraq did not immediately respond to AP questions about what precise accusations are planned against Hussein.

Previously, the military has outlined a host of possible lines of investigation, including claims that Hussein offered to provide false identification to a sniper seeking to evade U.S.-led forces and that Hussein took photographs that were synchronized with insurgent blasts. The AP inquiry found no support for either of those claims.
But why don't we let a court decide that?
The bulk of the photographs Hussein provided the AP were not about insurgent activity; he detailed both the aftermath of attacks and the daily lives of Iraqis in the war zone. There was no evidence that any images were coordinated with the insurgents or showed the instant of an attack.

Gardephe, now a New York-based attorney, said the AP has offered evidence to counter the allegations so far raised by the military. But, he noted, that it's possible the military could introduce new charges at the hearing that could include classified material. "This makes it impossible to put together a defense," said Gardephe, who is leading the defense team and plans to arrive in Baghdad next week. "At the moment, it looks like we can do little more than show up ... and try to put together a defense during the proceedings."

One option, he said, is to contend that the Pentagon's handling of Hussein violated Iraqi legal tenets brought in by Washington after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Among the possible challenges: AP claims that Hussein was interrogated at Camp Cropper this year without legal counsel.

Hussein is one of the highest-profile Iraqi journalists in U.S. custody.

In April 2006—just days before Hussein was detained—an Iraqi cameraman working for CBS News was acquitted of insurgent activity. Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein was held for about a year after being detained while filming the aftermath of a bombing in the northern city of Mosul.

Tomlin, however, said that freedom for Bilal Hussein, who is not related to the cameraman working for CBS, isn't guaranteed even if the judge rejects the eventual U.S. charges. The military can indefinitely hold suspects considered security risks in Iraq. "Even if he comes out the other side with an acquittal—as we certainly hope and trust that he will—there is not guarantee that he won't go right back into detention as a security risk."
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Fifth Column
Associated Press' shoddy work
2006-12-04
From the editor of the Boston Herald:
When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it. That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.

The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP. The AP is making up war crimes. But the resulting stink in the blogosphere has barely wrinkled a nose in the mainstream press. The ethics-obsessed Poynter Institute seems to be oblivious to it.

It has to do with the AP’s Iraqi stringers and an oft-quoted Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein. Problem is, the Iraqi police say Capt. Hussein does not exist. When the AP was forced to acknowledge this situation, it did so in a story about a new Interior Ministry policy regarding false reports. The AP buried the fact that its own false report prompted this new policy. The AP stands by its reporting.. The AP has cast “Capt. Jamil Hussein” simply as someone not authorized to speak, and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll has sniffed morally: “Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.”

The AP has another Iraqi stringer problem. Photographer Bilal Hussein is in U.S. custody, and the AP has been clamoring indignantly for his release. AP reports have buried the U.S. explanation that Hussein is being held without charge because - quite aside from producing photos that showed him to be overly intimate with terrorists in Fallujah - he was in an al-Qaeda bomb factory, with an al-Qaeda bombmaker, with traces of explosives on his person when he was arrested.

The AP, once a just-the-facts news delivery service, has lost its rudder. It has become a partisan, anti-American news agency that seeks to undercut a wartime president and American soldiers in the field. It is providing fraudulent, shoddy goods. It doesn’t even recognize it has a problem.

This is the point at which, another big American industry learned, people start buying Japanese. But as an American newspaper, if you want to provide your readers with affordable regional, national and international news, you have to deal with the AP.

If newspapers don’t have an alternative, readers do. It’s called the Internet. That’s why newspapers, if they don’t want to be dragged further into irrelevance and disrepute, have to tell The Associated Press they are dissatisfied with its product.
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Iraq
US Holds AP Sunni Iraqi (not PC) Photographer
2006-09-18
The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.
Be careful what you ask for.
Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year. "We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," said Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer. "We've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure."

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide — 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.
But they're off the battlefield. Like the Gitmo commander said the other day, they're not 'imprisoned' for punishment or rehabilitation, they are detained to save American lives.
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Iraq
Where Is Bilal Hussein?
2006-04-13
A snippet:
One member of the Pulitzer-winning AP team was AP stringer Bilal Hussein. Hussein's photos have raised serious, persistent questions about his relationship with terrorists in Iraq and whether his photos were/are staged in collusion with the enemy. I've learned of an intriguing news development that strengthens those lingering suspicions.

This afternoon, in response to a tip from an anonymous military source in Iraq, I contacted both the AP reporter embedded with the Marines in Ramadi, Todd Pitman, as well as AP's media relations office headquartered in New York concerning Hussein's whereabouts. No word from Pitman. But at 6:20pm EST, I received the following e-mail response from AP:

We are looking into reports that Mr. Hussein was detained by the U.S. military in Iraq but have no further details at this time.

Jack Stokes
The Associated Press
Corporate Communications

According to my tipster, Hussein was captured earlier today by American forces in a building in Ramadi, Iraq, with a cache of weapons.
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Iraq-Jordan
AP Photographer Flees Fallujah
2004-11-14
In the weeks before the crushing military assault on his hometown, Bilal Hussein sent his parents and brother away from Fallujah to stay with relatives.
The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer stayed behind to capture insider images during the siege of the former insurgent stronghold.
"Everyone in Fallujah knew it was coming. I had been taking pictures for days," he said. "I thought I could go on doing it."
In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein's northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire.
"Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out," he said.
"There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."
By Tuesday afternoon, as U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels engaged in fierce clashes in the heart of his neighborhood, Hussein snapped.
"U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house," he said.
Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western side of the city
"I wasn't really thinking," he said. "Suddenly, I just had to get out. I didn't think there was any other choice."
In the rush, Hussein left behind his camera lens and a satellite telephone for transmitting his images. His lens, marked with the distinctive AP logo, was discovered two days later by U.S. Marines next to a dead man's body in a house in Jolan.
AP colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, who by then had not heard from Hussein in 48 hours, became even more worried.
Hussein moved from house to house — dodging gunfire — and reached the river.
"I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."
He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."
"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards."
He met a peasant family, who gave him refuge in their house for two days. Hussein knew a driver in the region and sent a message to another AP colleague, Ali Ahmed, in nearby Ramadi.
Ahmed relayed the news that Hussein was alive to AP's Baghdad bureau. He sent a second message back to Hussein that a fisherman in nearby Habaniyah would ferry the photographer to safety by boat.
"At the end of the boat ride, Ali was waiting for me. He took me to Baghdad, to my office."
Sitting safely in the AP's offices, a haggard-looking Hussein offered a tired smile of relief.
"It was a terrible experience in which I learned that life is precious," he said. "I am happy that I am still alive after being close to death during these past days."
Sounds like he was just a little bit too crafty for his own good.
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