This is why I can't handle the news anymore. It infuriates me.
There is no honor in our operations in the middle east. No honor whatsoever. No democracy. No liberation. No truth. Nothing except lies and deception and violence fueled by greed and self entitlement. Nothing but fascism.
LONDON (Reuters) - Media rights groups demanded on Thursday that U.S. forces immediately release a Reuters journalist held in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq unless they could explain why he is being held without charge.Posted by Maria at August 25, 2005 02:56 PM | TrackBackReporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organization that campaigns to protect journalists detained or threatened because of their work, said it had written to top U.S. Middle East commander General John Abizaid to demand the release of 36-year-old Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani.
It also accused U.S. forces of carrying out summary arrests of journalists in Iraq without providing any justification.
"We point out that the decision to arrest a journalist should only be taken on an absolutely exceptional basis," the organization said.
"Journalists, especially Iraqi journalists, are already running very great risks to go into the field. More than 60 have already lost their lives in this country in two years. It is shocking that they are also being mistreated by the U.S. army."
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U.S. military spokesmen have refused to say why they are holding Mashhadani, 36, who has worked for Reuters for a year as a freelance cameraman and photographer in the city of Ramadi.
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Reuters has demanded that the military release Mashhadani or provide a full account of the accusations against him.
An account from Mashhadani's family of his arrest on August 8 suggests that images found by U.S. Marines on his cameras during a general sweep in the neighborhood prompted his detention.
Relatives said that Marines conducting a routine search of the house turned hostile after viewing images stored on Mashhadani's video and stills cameras and his desktop computer.
Reuters has provided U.S. forces with footage by Mashhadani that shows scenes of conflict and gunmen operating in plain view of civilians. Nothing in his work has indicated activity incompatible with his status as an independent journalist.
U.S. military officials have responded neither to offers of further information from Reuters nor to proposals for meetings with Reuters editors to clarify Mashhadani's activities.
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