"U.S. Filmmaker Among 5 Arrested In Iraq" - Cyrus Kar Needs Our Help

[Coastie for Truth]

X-posted from Israeli/Palestinian Affairs at Moderator's suggestion

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AND MANY MORE LINKS ABOUT CYRUS KAR

From Link 1:
Cyrus Kar's family says his passion for the documentary film he was working on about an ancient Persian ruler led to his being locked up in a military jail outside Baghdad in May.
Kar was arrested after Iraqi security forces allegedly seized several dozen washing machine timers -- components frequently used in terrorist bombs -- in the taxi in which he was traveling. Kar says the timers were owned by the driver.
Now, relatives of the 44-year-old Iranian-American and U.S. Navy veteran have sued the government to gain his freedom. They contend Kar's detention tramples on his constitutional rights and claim FBI officials have already cleared him of suspicion.
''I'm here to beg President Bush... to release an innocent boy,'' Kar's aunt, Parvin Modarress, said at a news conference Wednesday to announce the lawsuit in Washington, D.C. ''He went to Iraq to do his dream work, to make a documentary.''
Kar is one of five U.S. citizens suspected of insurgent activities in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said. They were captured separately and do not appear to be related, spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He declined to identify them, citing a Pentagon policy that prohibits the identification of detainees.
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From Link 2:
The American military is holding five U.S. citizens, apparently including a Los Angeles filmmaker, among more than 10,000 detainees in Iraq on suspicion of possible terrorist or other criminal activity, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
All of the five are being held without charges or access to lawyers. Three have dual Iraqi citizenship, one dual Iranian citizenship and a fifth man, arrested late last year in Iraq, dual Jordanian citizenship.
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From Link 3:
An Iranian-born U.S. citizen who also is a Navy veteran is being held in Iraq by American forces after security officials in Baghdad reported finding a common component for improvised bombs in his taxi, according to his family.
Relatives of Cyrus Kar, an aspiring filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles, said they plan to sue the government to gain his release. They say he has been cleared and there is no legal authority for his detention.
His family says Kar, 44, was in Iraq to film scenes for a documentary on King Cyrus the Great, founder of Persia, when he was arrested at a checkpoint in Baghdad in mid-May. He also had filmed in Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Afghanistan and consulted with scholars, they said.
They said he called them on May 24 and said he had been detained because of a misunderstanding involving a taxi driver who had been driving Kar and his cameraman around Baghdad. They last heard from him on June 28.
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AND MANY, MANY MORE ARTICLES ABOUT CYRUS KAR

We have often fought among ourselves on the I/P forum. But I am asking for help from the DU I/P community for the nephew of a colleague.

We need pressure – and lots of it – to keep Cyrus from falling into the Gulag of Abu Ghraib – and Gitmo.

If it can happen to a hippie peacenik US citizen whose only crime is Shiia ancestry......... (Google "Patriot Act")

Cyrus's only crime was to be a Shiite in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Jim Lane]

1. One way to keep this story alive

Often, it seems, there's a flurry of attention about someone who's a particularly egregious victim of something like this -- but then, after a while, people forget about the story.

Later, it will make headlines again. In the case of Cyrus Kar, that may be soon, as a result of the recent publicity, or it may be through a lawsuit or something else that takes a while. By then, the background may have been forgotten, and people have to start from scratch.

This is the sort of thing that Demopedia was meant for. I've started the article on Kar, just by skimming the news stories, but there's more information just in those stories that I didn't include. (Writing a fair statement about what points are agreed on and what's in dispute, and what the military claims, might be the hardest part.) Here's my initial draft: http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Cyrus_Kar

The idea of Demopedia's collaborative process is that anyone can edit it. Yes, that means you! You just go to the link I've given and click on "Edit this page". If you get the format wrong, someone else can fix it. If you accidentally delete the entire article, someone else can restore it from the "Page history". So don't be shy. You can help flesh out this article, and add more information as it becomes available. Ideally, there'll be an informative and up-to-date article about Kar and his predicament, which will be very helpful to people as the story unfolds, and thereafter as a record of yet another such authoritarian action taken under Bush.

I suggest that one useful activity for the Activist Corps will be help preserve information about events like this. Demopedia can become our institutional memory.

[nofurylike]

2. sent info out, asked they investigate and report:

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

20/20
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123566&page=1

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

and there are plenty of others folks can send the info - even just the AP article - to.


peace

[sojourner]

3. Off to Gitmo he goes? Or Abu Ghraib...Jesus!!! Madness!!!!!

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Thanks everybody

-- Thanks to all DUers who wrote e-mails and called.