Region | Iraq
US declines to free Reuters photographer held in Iraq
The US military in Iraq is not obliged to obey an Iraqi court order to release a freelance photographer working for Reuters news agency and will hold him into 2009, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
- Agencies
- Published: 10:52 December 10, 2008
Baghdad: The US military in Iraq is not obliged to obey an Iraqi court order to release a freelance photographer working for Reuters news agency and will hold him into 2009, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
The Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled on November 30 that there was no evidence against Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, and ordered the US military to release him from Camp Cropper prison near Baghdad airport, where he has been detained since September.
"Though we appreciate the decision of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq in the Jassam case, their decision does not negate the intelligence information that currently lists him as a threat to Iraq security and stability," said Major Neal Fisher, spokesman for the US military's detainee operations in Iraq.
"He will be processed for release in a safe and orderly manner after December 31st, in the order of his individual threat level, along with all other detainees," Fisher said in an email to Reuters.
"Since he already has a decision from the CCCI, when it is his turn for release he will be able to out-process without having to go through the courts as other detainees in his threat classification will have to do."
Jassam was detained in early September in a raid on his home in Mahmudiya by US and Iraqi forces. His photographic equipment was also confiscated. Jassam works for other Iraqi media, in addition to Reuters News, a Thomson Reuters company.
Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, was once one of the most violent areas of Iraq as sectarian bloodshed raged in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion, but security there and elsewhere has improved markedly in recent months.
"I am disappointed he has not been released in accordance with the court order," Reuters News Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger said on Tuesday.
In the ruling issued by the Iraqi court at the end of last month, Iraqi prosecutors said they had asked the US military repeatedly for the evidence it had against Jassam but that US forces had failed to provide any material.
Fisher said that the US military was "not bound" to provide military intelligence to Iraqi courts.
The legal situation changes next year when a security pact with the United States enters into force, replacing a UN mandate governing the presence of foreign troops and paving the way for US forces to withdraw from Iraq by end-2011.
Under the pact, the US military will no longer be able to detain people.
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