IRAQ: One year on Reuters cameraman Ibrahim Jassam still held by U.S. army

Record ID: 823900

  • Title: IRAQ: One year on Reuters cameraman Ibrahim Jassam still held by U.S. army
  • Date: 2nd September 2009
  • Summary: PICTURES OF JASSAM
  • Embargoed: 17th September 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAE0GSKJKFLSXB32HOQ8AFN2BT8
  • Story Text: On September 2, 2008 U.S. and Iraqi troops smashed in the doors of Iraqi journalist Ibrahim Jassam's home, shouting "freeze" and holding back snarling dogs before they hauled him off into the night in his underwear.
    A year later, neither Jassam and his family nor global news agency Reuters, which employed him as a freelance TV cameraman and photographer, have been told exactly why he has been detained for all this time by U.S. military forces in Iraq.
    The evidence against Jassam is classified, but the accusations have to do with "activities with insurgents", said Lt. Col. Pat Johnson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military in Iraq.
    The term "insurgents" in Iraq generally refers to Sunni Islamist groups, like al-Qaeda. Jassam is a Shi'ite Muslim.
    Jassam, who is being held in a prison camp built in the desert on the Iraq-Kuwait border, will eventually be released.
    "Even if he spent a year in a prison, he will eventually be released. I tell you, Ibrahim has been arrested because of his job as a journalist, he has no enemies and no one had filed a complaint against him -- he has been arrested because he is a journalist," Qaiss Jassam, Ibrahim's brother, said.
    Under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact, called a Status of Forces Agreement, the U.S. military must hand over the thousands of Iraqis it still has in its custody as Iraq gradually regains its sovereignty more than six years after the U.S.-led invasion.
    Jassam's family is waiting impatiently to welcome him back to the family home in Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, to resume their normal life.
    Six months before Jassam's arrest, another teenage son was killed by what the family says was fire from a U.S. helicopter while he was crossing a street to buy bread at a bakery.
    Mahmudiya, in the "Triangle of Death," was a violent town, in the grip of Shi'ite militias, and gun battles were common.
    The U.S. military has not revealed details about the arrest, but his family said when the soldiers came at 1 a.m., the family was sleeping on the roof to escape the heat of late summer.
    The Iraqi soldiers were abusive and cruel, pushing Jassam's elderly father to the ground before their U.S. counterparts stopped them, she said. They smashed every door in the house.
    Iman Jassam, Ibrahim's sister, called on the government to examine cases of prisoners in jail, but not arrest them without charges.
    "We hope the government reviews cases of such prisoners to define their charges, it is regrettable they have to spend their youth in jail," she said.
    "The government should support them -- the educated people and journalists, this journalist (Ibrahim Jassam) who offered the truth to people, the government is leaving him like this, in jail, while terrorists are roaming free," she added.
    The family says it has been hard not knowing anything.
    "I asked him, Ibrahim, do you know the charge you were arrested for so we can seek help? He told me, 'there is no charge against me and I want to know of the charges against me, and if there are any, then let them put me on trail because I want to be free. People even ask me, what are you charged with, Ibrahim? I answer that I don't know, I am just a journalist and my job is to report the truth to people'," Iman Jassam said.
    The Iraqi Central Criminal Court already ruled last November there was no case against Jassam.
    But the U.S. military says it considers Jassam a security threat to Iraq. It says that under the security agreement, it is entitled to hold Jassam as long as possible.
    Reuters argues the U.S. army is misinterpreting its remit.
    The U.S. military detained many Iraqi journalists during the sectarian slaughter and insurgency unleashed by the 2003 invasion. None have been known to have been charged.
    Journalists rights groups say U.S. forces may be misinterpreting legitimate journalistic activities in war zones. Taking pictures of Shi'ite militiamen battling U.S. troops, for example, might look like enemy propaganda to a U.S. soldier.
    The U.S. military said it expected all high security threat detainees to go before an Iraqi judge starting in December 2009. The intelligence information against Jassam will be aired then.
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