Nomination

For those who follow my work, I had the great pleasure to learn that I have been nominee at Bayeux prize for war reporting for a report that I made last spring in Iraq.

You can view the story here

This is my second nomination at Bayeux. I was nominee for the first time in 2004, for a radio story I made on the first day of Moqtata as Sadr’s uprising.

Freedom for Bilal Hussein

Reporters without borders (RSF) seems to be too busy these days (the Tibetan issue and the Olympics in Beijing –what’s the link please with the advocacy for the press freedom?!) to pay attention to the last developements in the detention of our AP colleague, the Pulitzer prize winner Bilal Hussein.

Last weeks, an Iraqi judicial panel met twice and dismissed all the criminal allegations against the Iraqi photographer. It ordered it release from the US-run military custody where he has been kept for more than two years.

Photo courtesy AP.

AP writes that “the panel ordered a “halt to all legal proceedings” and said Hussein (…) should be “released immediately” unless he is wanted in connection with something else”.

Bilal’s case enlights the problem of dozens of thousands of Iraqi detainees who should benefit from an amnesty law enacted last February, aiming at moving the country towards national reconciliation (a law US officials commented as a major achievement).

The US say that they intend to review the Iraqi judicial panel’s orders before deciding on releasing the prisonners from custody, and stupulate that their U.N. Security Council mandate allows them to detain anyone in Iraq deemed a security risk to coalition or Iraqi forces, even if an Iraqi judicial body has ordered that prisoner freed.

Like most of the detainees, Bilal was never brought to trial, nor Iraqi or US, nor civilian or military.

To follow the case :
The AP’s site on Bilal Hussein
www.freebilal.org

Free Moussa Kaka

RFI correspondent in Niger was jailed last September. He was accused of having links with the Tuareg rebellion, and was charged with “complicity in undermining the authority of the state”. He could be sentenced to spend his life in prison.

Amnesty International considers him as a political prisoner.

Persons interested in the press freedom can follow his case on this site (French, English, Spanish) and sign a petition.

I have to say that I am quite upset by the difference in the treatment in the media between the case of Thomas Dandois and Pierre Creisson and the support, that was until recently rather weak, expressed to Moussa Kaka. It’s time for the press to stop discriminating between the local journalists and the reporters. We are all doing the same job. We don’t take greater risks than them. They deserve at least as much support as we do.

A tribune on Imad Mughniyeh’s death

Thanks to Alain Gresh’s blog, I read the editorial of the Lebanese Daily Star daily, dated 14th of Feb. It was published after the assassination of the Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh.

It is interesting to notice that this newspaper, being read mainly among the Sunni and Christian communities in Lebanon, is rather close to the Western position.

I’m not trying to advocate any crime or defend any violent action (and this article does not either) but one must recall the local context before issuing quick judgments.

Here is an extract :

‘Whether one chooses to condemn or praise Mughniyeh, it is worth recalling the context in which he arose to become one of the most wanted men in the world. Mughniyeh had not yet been born in 1948, when Israeli forces entered Lebanon and killed dozens of civilians in the village of Hula, and he was just a toddler when the Jewish state sent commandos to Beirut International Airport to blow up 13 passenger planes. During Mughniyeh’s childhood and early adolescence, Israel systematically destroyed dozens of Muslim, Christian and Druze villages in Lebanon, making much of the South of the country uninhabitable and forcing scores of civilians to flee from their ancestral homes to the southern suburbs of Beirut. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Mughniyeh’s response to the criminal brutality that he witnessed in his formative years, one cannot deny the role that these events played in making him the man that he eventually became: Mughniyeh, like Hizbullah itself, arose as a direct response to Israeli aggression.’