Pentagon defends indefinite detention of AP photographer in Iraq

Above: One of 20 photographs which won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2005.

NEW YORK The Pentagon has brushed off a request from a journalist organization seeking more information and a decision on Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer held for six months in Iraq without formal charges.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, in a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not provide details about why Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein continues to be held without charges at a U.S.-run prison camp. He instead repeated the military's longstanding assertion that it detained Hussein under authority of U.N. resolutions and in accord with the Geneva Conventions.

Hussein was arrested in Ramadi on April 12. The military has said he was in the company of two alleged insurgents, in an apartment where there were bomb-making materials, and that his detention was for "imperative reasons of security" under U.N. resolutions. His "strong ties" to insurgents go beyond the role of a journalist, the military has said.

The Associated Press last month made a public call for the military to either charge Hussein with a crime or release him.

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

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