Second Reuters cameraman in Iraq held without charge

[Eugene]

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-09-26T160044Z_01_YUE657622_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ-USA-REUTERS.xml

Second Reuters cameraman in Iraq held without charge
Mon Sep 26, 2005 5:20 PM BST

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A second Iraqi journalist working for Reuters has
been ordered detained indefinitely by a secret tribunal and the news
agency demanded on Monday that he be released or given a chance to
defend himself in open court.

Freelance television cameraman Samir Mohammed Noor, who was arrested
by Iraqi troops at his home in the northern town of Tal Afar four
months ago, was found to be "an imperative threat to the coalition
forces and the security of Iraq" at a secret hearing last week, a U.S.
military spokesman said.

He is at the Camp Bucca internment camp in southern Iraq and his case
would be reviewed within six months, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill
said. U.S. officials have repeatedly refused to disclose what
accusations have been made against him.

"The authorities need to specify the charges against him and allow
him to address those charges openly, with a lawyer of his choosing,"
Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger said.

<snip>

more...

Another journalist summarily locked up. Let freedom reign! :sarcasm:

[bullimiami]

1. iraq has their democracy. bush style.

freedom of nothing.

[DBoon]

2. Coming home to America soon.

this is just a dry run for the domestic version of "detain the journalist"

[merwin]

3. The more they do this, the less likely Reuters is to print favorable

articles.

They can live with a president screwing over a country, but not a president screwing over their journalists.

[Ben Ceremos]

4. He has most likely been arrested because

he has proof the US is staging many of the car-bombings. This is the idea behind his being a "threat to coalition forces".

[Realityhack]

8. Wha?!?

What are you talking about?

[Ben Ceremos]

14. I am talking about

numerous reports of explosions going off while no driver is in the vehicle, at times when no activity of any kind other than American troop movements has been observed. Everytime it is suggested, the US arrests the person as being a security risk. I am looking for links to such stories and will provide them asap. I suggest you review the archives here for further stories. I distinctly recall a bombing about 2, possibly 3, months back that killed numerous children in a Baghdad neighborhood. An Iraqi on a roof claimed to have seen American soldiers planting some sort of device and leaving the area. Shortly therafter, the device went off and the children lay dead and maimed. The man shouted to his neighbors that he had seen the Americans plant the explosive. He was summarily arrested and ...? (Sorry archives are down right now...stay tuned)Considering the capture of the 2 Brit SAS men in Arab garb with a car full of explosives( who shot an killed 2 Iraqi policemen) I would urge you to reconsider your apparent scepticism. It serves BFEE interests to cause as much damage as possible and plead it as necessity for continued occupation. Research my claims and follow the logical implications. Furthermore, this war is being waged as much against journalists who seek out the truth, as against the supposed "terrorists and infiltrators" who make up the resistance. Think what you will, the dots I've connected are leading me to see that Negroponte's short stint in Iraq was to help implement this type of strategy...Care to help prove me right?

[Ben Ceremos]

15. All I've been able to come up with, still looking...

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#111736857847338021

"But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It’s a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butchers shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn’t think much about the story- nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper- hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away."

[Ben Ceremos]

17. String of reports about my claim...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WarOnFreedom/message/2438


Realityhack (nice name by the way), I urge you to go and read the reports at this forum. It will provide more links and "rumours" about the nature of the car-bombing trend.

Hope this is a start, will try to find MSM reports, though I believe it will be in vain. Peace

[NYC]

5. Unspecified charges, undisclosed accusations.

The Trial by Franz Kafka.

Within the past few days, someone asked for the titles of 3 books that often come to mind. The Trial was one that often comes to my mind.

It seems everyone in Iraq is Joseph K.

[bobbieinok]

6. Kafka's 'Before the Law'......'Vor dem Gesetz'

a haunting parable

(I split up the one paragraph the original was in)

http://www.herzogbr.net/kafka/beforethelaw.htm

BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment."

Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the door-keepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him."

These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many at-tempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity.

The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything."

During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly, later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him.

Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage.

"What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

[NYC]

7. Thank you very much.

I had never read that. Thanks.

[bobbieinok]

10. have you read Kafka's book The Castle...it's also haunting like The

Trial

have you read Dickens' book Bleak House? the parts of it that deal with people caught up in the legal system sound very Kafkaesque....I was all ready to write about the Dickens-Kafka similarities and then discovered a few books had been written about this

http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/searchworks/BleakHouse/BH5.html

(from chapter 5----just a bit; the whole thing really hits in context of the 3 caught up in the long, ongoing case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce)

....

"Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate. I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on a superior footing. At present, I don't mind confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse the introduction of such mean topics."

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches--I should think at least twenty.

"I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye- es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"

Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no one but herself was present.

"Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"

Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took the opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine the birds.

"I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for (you'll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my mind requires to be so very clear, you know!

more....

[NYC]

11. I haven't read The Castle

or Bleak House. (Which book had Gradgrind?)

Sometimes, I think I should read more fiction. On the other hand, I'm already depressed enough by the current "situation". Why compound the problem by reading Kafka and Dickens?

If things improved, instead of staying the same or going backwards, it would be easier to read. People are being held without charges. The Trial was written before 1924 (Kafka's death). Why are we doing this now?

Why did It Can't Happen Here seem like a manual when I reread it after Bush took office? It didn't seem so "appropriate" the first time I read it.

I am reminded of "The Harrow" (or, it may have been called In the Penal Colony) when I read about Abu Ghraib.

I also think about Moby Dick, good vs. imagined evil.

I am currently reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. More depressing input, though so far, no surprises.

However, I will add The Castle and Bleak House to my list of books to read.

Thanks. :hi:

[bobbieinok]

12. read Kafka as part of German degree....at one time when my son was young

I read a lot of Dickens and decided I liked a lot of the novels.....Little Dorrit (about debtors'prison), David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, etc

[NYC]

13. I liked Nicholas Nickleby the best.

Gradgrind was in Hard Times. So, I still think I never read Bleak House.

[thebigidea]

16. Orson Welles' odd film version opens with a lovely rendition of that...

gorgeously strange movie, criminally underappreciated.

If someone ever gives me the money, i'm going to make a supremely demented black and white AMERIKA.

[LynnTheDem]

9. Exactly the same shit bush accused Saddam Hussein of doing.

Same shit, different asshole.

[cantstandbush]

18. I say the US MSM is still not doing their jobs. They should be protesting

internationally about what is happening to journalists involved in covering the war on terrorism. Isn't there any camaraderie among journalists? What happens unjustly to one should reverberate throughout all of journalism world-wide. The silence is deafening in the US.

[struggle4progress]

19. kick