U.S. Military Seizes Iraqi Reporter for 'The Guardian'

This crap just NEVER ends.

American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the London daily, The Guardian, and TV's Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.

Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning, the newspaper reports. He was released hours later.

Fadhil is working with and the newspaper and Guardian Films "on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated," the paper reports.

"The troops told Dr. Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned."

The director of the film, Callum Macrae, said yesterday: "The timing and nature of this raid is extremely disturbing. It is only a few days since we first approached the US authorities and told them Ali was doing this investigation, and asked them then to grant him an interview about our findings.

They shoot at an Italian journalist, and claim she and her driver were going fast and ignorning signals (bullshit). In that incident, just like the one above, the U.S. military was alerted, so the excuse that they thought she was an insurgent (or that they were looking for an insurgent, in the story above) is just total crap.

They blow up Al-Jazeera work buildings around the world, and seriously wanted to blow up the one in Qatar. They close down the bureau in Iraq. And now they forcefully enter a known reporter's home, firing bullets at his family, no less, and kidnap him, with a hood over his head! They release him later, but voila, the film they took from his residence has not been returned. Like that's ever gonna happen. I sure hope he had copies.

And what is it we are importing to Iraq? Let's hear it for democracy ... rah rah rah.

UPDATE:

This is very troubling on all sorts of levels. US troops do not have a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq and do not have a constitutional right to arrest civilians without a warrant. And, the US military should not be harassing journalists reporting on contract fraud.

Courtesy of Juan Cole.