A Reuters photographer was freed today, by the U.S. military, after 17 months of imprisonment, in Iraq, without charge, and without being allowed to see the evidence against him because it was “classified.”
Unfortunately, the photographer, whose name is Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, was also arrested and kept in detention all this time by the U.S. military, and he was released now only because of the formal prisoner exchange required by the security agreement signed by Iraq and the United States at the end of the Bush administration, which cedes sovereignty, in stages, to the Iraqi government.
He was not seized in the midst of combat on the battlefield. He was seized when the U.S. military broke down the door of Mohammed’s home and forced him into custody with no explanation.
I am going to quote a brief snip — one of the more moving parts of this article — and then urge you to read the rest here:
In Mahmudiya, friends and relatives crowded into Jassam’s small family home, greeting him with hugs, tears and sweets.”I still cannot believe my son is next to me,” said his mother, Fadhila Alwan. “Thanks be to God. I cannot speak. I will keep him in my arms for days but I will not be able to get enough of him.”
My daughter flashed across my mind when I read those words. She always does when I read this kind of thing. I just instantly, and with no conscious intent, put myself in the skin of the mother in any story like this.
Would that the military officers who ordered Mohammed to be arrested and thrown into a legal black hole for almost a year and a half could have gone through a similar mental process.
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