| 09/20/06
AP Statement on Michelle Malkin's Sept.
20, 2006 newspaper column
For publication in those newspapers who used the Malkin column
in print or online:
Sept. 20, 2006
Letter to the Editor:
Michelle Malkin’s incendiary Sept. 20, 2006 column about
Associated Press is filled with innuendo, distortion and factual
error. This is not surprising because AP has found numerous
inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Malkin’s online
blog references to AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who has
been detained in Iraq for more than five months by the U.S.
military without being charged. Malkin would deny Bilal due
process and the rule of law by trying him in her column and
assuming his guilt by mere association.
Among other things, Malkin asserts in her column that Bilal
took photographs “before, during, and after the Iraqi
desert execution of…Salvatore Santoro.” This is
absolutely false. The man identified as Santoro was already
dead by the time anyone working for The Associated Press was
brought to see him. The AP story, filed on Dec. 16, 2004,
explains that masked insurgents stopped Hussein and other
AP journalists at a roadblock and took them to the site where
the blindfolded body lay, already stiff with rigor mortis.
For the full story and photo captions that AP transmitted,
see http://www.ap.org/response/response_091906a.html.
To see all the facts about the detention of AP photographer
Bilal Hussein and thousands of others detained by the U.S.
military in Iraq, see AP’s extensive news coverage at
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/whatsnew.html.
There you can learn why AP has been asking the U.S. military
to either charge or release Bilal, an Iraqi citizen whom they
detained while he was working in Ramadi. While claiming his
ties to insurgents are inappropriate, the military has not
provided clear evidence or brought charges in a court of law.
Journalists interview and photograph murderers, child molesters,
kidnappers, and, yes, even terrorists, when they cover news
that the public has a right to know, such as the reality of
the insurgency in Iraq. To cover the conflicts in our world,
journalists must have contact with the people who engage on
various sides of the conflict. While AP understands that its
journalists may be detained briefly during a military sweep
on occasion, indefinite detention without charges is not acceptable.
As AP reported on Sept. 17, Bilal is one of about 14,000 people
held by the U.S. military as “security detainees”
in a global network of overseas prisons. They have not been
charged with crimes, and most have not heard why they have
been held. Government officials in Iraq say the U.S. has no
right to detain its citizens in this way.
AP is insisting that the U.S. military follow accepted due
process under the law and the Geneva Conventions – that
is, give Bilal Hussein the chance to see any evidence and
answer formal charges; if the evidence is not there, release
him.
Ellen Hale, V.P., Corporate Communications
The Associated Press
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