Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed (L), Reuters freelance TV cameraman and photographer, greets his friend after his release at his home in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad February 10, 2010. The U.S. military freed Jassam in Iraq on Wednesday, almost a year and a half after snatching him from his home in the middle of the night and holding him without charge. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani
The United States military released Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed on Wednesday after detaining him at Camp Cropper in Iraq for 17 months without charge.
“We welcome the decision to release Jassam,” said IPI Director David Dadge. “However, we remain concerned by the fact that the US military felt it acceptable to hold him for 17 months in the absence of any charges against him. Furthermore, this case reveals the disturbing vacuum that exists between US military law and sovereign Iraqi law and it makes a mockery of the principle of habeas corpus."
The Iraqi photojournalist, who worked for Reuters and other news agencies as a freelancer, was seized from his home in Mahmudiya in September 2008.
In November 2008, the Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled that there was no case against Jassam, but the US military continued to hold him, asserting that he was a “security threat” because of his alleged “activities with insurgents.”
Jassam is one of a number of Iraqi journalists detained without charge, for varying lengths of time, by U.S. forces since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. On the anniversary of Jassam’s arrest last year, IPI noted that the military’s treatment of journalists was “a slap in the face to the US government’s stated belief in press freedom, as well as its long-cherished belief in due process.”
