11/07/06

Press group asks U.S. Defense Secretary to review detention of AP photographer

By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The chairman of a press freedom group has asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to intervene personally in the case of an Associated Press photojournalist who has been detained for nearly seven months by the U.S. military.

Photographer Bilal Hussein was arrested in Iraq in April under circumstances that remain unclear and unexplained by the Pentagon.

In a letter faxed to Rumsfeld on Monday, Paul E. Steiger, chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the group was concerned about Hussein's indefinite detention without charges or a trial. He asked Rumsfeld to review the case "to ensure that justice is done."

"He should either be charged with a crime in a court of law and given a fair trial or released at once," Steiger wrote.

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment on the letter. "We typically don't discuss private correspondence the secretary receives," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros.

Hussein, an Iraqi whose work was part of a package that won a Pulitzer Prize for The Associated Press last year, was detained in Ramadi on April 12.

Military officials have said Hussein was in the company of two alleged insurgents when he was detained and had been "afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists."

Other groups, including the Associated Press Managing Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, have called on Rumsfeld to either make the evidence against Hussein public and give him a fair trial, or release him immediately.

Monday's letter is not the first time the Committee to Protect Journalists has formally inquired about Hussein's detention.

A previous letter, sent in September to an assistant defense secretary, elicited a response from a military spokesman, but no detailed explanation of the basis for the detention.

In his letter to Rumsfeld on Monday, Steiger said Hussein was among dozens of journalists who had been detained by U.S. troops, including at least eight who were held for weeks or months without charge.

"Irrespective of the motivation for his detention, detaining a journalist for seven months without allowing minimum due process represents an unacceptable infringement on the ability of the press to carry out its work and is openly at odds with the message of democracy and respect for the rule of law that U.S. officials have publicly espoused in Iraq."