09/19/06



AP Statement on video and photos from Dec. 16, 2004


From The Associated Press, Corporate Communications
Some blogs are asserting that AP photographed and videotaped an execution of an Italian man named Salvatore Santoro near Ramadi, Iraq, in December of 2004. This is not true. The man was already dead by the time anyone working for The Associated Press was brought to see him. The photographs of the dead body, taken by Bilal Hussein, and the captions transmitted with those photos, appear below the following AP story filed on Dec. 16, 2004. This AP story explains that masked insurgents stopped Hussein and other AP journalists, including an AP video journalist, at a roadblock and took them to the site where the blindfolded body lay, already stiff with rigor mortis. They propped the body up and allowed the journalists to photograph and videotape it.