Two years later

Fallujah - Iraqi insurgents fire a mortar and small arms during the U.S.-led offensive against insurgents in the city.
Photo: Bilal Hussein/AP

On 16 April, 2008, AP photographer Bilal Hussein was finally told by his American captors that he would be set free, after being held for two years without charge.

The Pulitzer prize winning photographer faced unsubstantiated accusations from the U.S. military that he collaborated with Iraqi insurgents. I know that not many of us photographers even get the chance to go to Iraq, but once there you would have thought that the insurgents would be your main threat, right? Basically the US military can remove any journalist in the field that they see as undesirable and keep them locked up without ever saying why. So much for delivering democracy, eh?

The U.S. military agreed to release the journalist after determining that he “no longer presents an imperative threat to security.”

Read more here, here and here.