U.S. Military Will Keep Holding Reuters Photographer

From: http://nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2008/12/reuters2.html

U.S. Military Will Keep Holding Reuters Photographer

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (December 10, 2008) – The American military is maintaining that Reuters freelance photojournalist Jassam Mohammed is "a threat to Iraq security and stability" based on their own intelligence, and have decided to ignore an Iraqi court's decision that there is no evidence against him as well as to disregard the Central Criminal Court's November order to set him free.

U.S. military spokesman Major Neal Fisher said Mohammed, who has been held since September, will continued to be held in Camp Cropper prison near Baghdad's airport into 2009.

Fisher told Reuters that Mohammed "will be processed for release in a safe and orderly manner after December 31, in the order of his individual threat level, along with all other detainees. Since he already has a decision from the CCCI, when it is his turn for release he will be able to out-process without having to go through the courts as other detainees in his threat classification will have to do."

Jassam was detained after a raid on his home in Mahmudiya by U.S. and Iraqi forces. His photographic equipment was also confiscated. The freelancer works for other Iraqi media, in addition to Reuters News, a Thomson Reuters company.

"I am disappointed he has not been released in accordance with the court order," Reuters News editor-in-chief David Schlesinger said.

In the ruling issued by the Iraqi court at the end of last month, Iraqi prosecutors said they had asked the U.S. military repeatedly for the evidence it had against Jassam but that U.S. forces had failed to provide any material.

Fisher said that the U.S. military was "not bound" to provide military intelligence to Iraqi courts.

The legal situation changes next year when a security pact with the United States enters into force, replacing a United Nations mandate governing the presence of foreign troops and paving the way for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Under the pact, the U.S. military will no longer be able to detain people.

Most of the more than 15,000 detainees currently held in Iraq by U.S. forces will have to be set free as a result. Others who are subject to Iraqi arrest warrants will be transferred to Iraqi prisons. The pact gives no timeline for that process to happen but says it should be conducted in an orderly manner.

Fisher declined to arrange a meeting between Reuters and the U.S. commander of the prisons operations, Brigadier General David Quantock, to discuss Jassam's continuing detention.

"I will not ask him to make this detainee more important than the other 15,800 detainees, when he has already made his decision," Fisher said.

Reuters and international media rights groups have criticized the U.S. military's refusal to deal more quickly with suspicions apparently arising from the legitimate activities of reporters covering acts of violence.

In August, the U.S. military freed a photographer working for Reuters after holding him for three weeks without charges. It had been the third time Ali al-Mashhadani, who also conducts freelance work for the BBC and National Public Radio, had been detained.