Political Persecution?? U.S. Seeks to Prosecute Pulitzer Prize-Winning A.P. Photographer

U.S. Seeks to Prosecute Pulitzer Prize-Winning A.P. Photographer
Scott Horton - Nov 21, 2007 - http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001717


Reports out since Monday note that the United States Department of Defense will seek to have criminal charges brought against Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer who belonged to a team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photographs of the war in Iraq. Hussein’s contribution to the package included a series of arresting photographs of close up fighting from the assault on Falluja.

The story was first broken by a right-wing blogger who has has been used as a regular dissemination point for information about the case by senior Pentagon figures. That fact is one of the dead give-aways of the case. This blogger and several of her associates published histrionic attacks on Hussein before he was arrested, claiming that his photographs showed that he was associated with insurgent organizations and attacking the Pulitzer Committee for its decision to honor the A.P.’s submission of war photographs. In the end, the order to arrest Hussein came from very high up, and the reason for the arrest was unmistakable: he was the man who took those damned photographs!

A Pentagon source who requested anonymity advised me that the Pentagon has prepared a total of nine charges against Hussein. All but two of the charges are “make weight,” the source said. The two “more serious accusations” are that Hussein promised to help an individual suspected of involvement in insurgent activities to secure a false I.D., and that his photographs—disseminated internationally by the A.P.–demonstrate that Hussein is a propagandist for insurgents. The source said all of these allegations, excepting perhaps the claims about the I.D., were “extremely weak” and “lacked any meaningful evidence to support them” but noted that “after more than a year and a half of holding this man in prison, it was not possible simply to release him, because that would mean admitting that a mistake was made.”

The source also stated that the Pentagon’s public affairs division, ...........

The Associated Press, who disseminated the photographs, is also a propagandist for insurgents. Therefore, it is by definition a terrorist organization which is subject to closure and the seizure of assets by the US government. Likewise, any news outlet that showed the photos.

And thus the elimination of the freedom of the press continues. :cry: