Iraqi CBS Cameraman Released After 1 Year Imprisonment by U.S. Forces Without Due Process

We turn now to Iraq. Violence and kidnappings continue to wrack the country and the dangers posed towards reporters covering the war are greater than ever. When Western journalists like Jill Carroll are taken hostage by Iraqi insurgents they appropriately receive international media attention, condemnation from across the globe and worldwide calls for their release.

But when Iraqi journalists are detained by US forces the story is a very different one.

Just consider the case of CBS cameraman Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein. In April 2005, he was shot in the hip by an American sniper while filming the wreckage of a car bomb in Mosul. US troops then detained him, claiming he had tested positive for explosive residue and that images in his camera linked him to the insurgents.

He was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib for more than a year without due process.

Abdul Ameer was released just last week after an Iraqi criminal court acquitted him of collaborating with insurgents, citing a lack of evidence. No charges were made public until the trial itself.

The case is not an isolated one. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented seven cases in 2005 alone in which U.S. forces detained Iraqi journalists for many weeks or months without charge or due process.

* Scott Horton, a New York attorney who recently returned from Baghdad where he was working on Abdul Ameer's case. Horton is Chairman of the International Law Committee at the New York Bar Association.

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