In “The Big Picture(s),” I noted the case of Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer working for the Associated Press with a history of taking staged photographs of Islamic terrorists, who was detained by the US military as a security threat in April 2006.

An Iraqi investigating magistrate convened the first criminal hearing in the case on Sunday.  The AP coverage is thisclose to a press release from the lawyer the AP hired to defend Hussein, which caused Bob Owens to suggest that the AP, as an involved party in this case, should recuse themselves from reporting on Hussein’s trial.  He also notes that “AP editor Kim Gamel cannot claim to be avoiding bias and a conflict of interest when interviewing AP spokesman Paul Colford about the trial of AP employee Bilal Hussein.”  He particularly notes that the AP coverage leaves out that Hussein was arrested with a known al Qaeda terrorist.

This is true, though this is not the AP’s only omission from its own coverage of the Hussein case. 

For example, the AP has reported that its own inquiry found no support for the claims against Hussein, but does not mention in its own reportage that its own inquiry is almost entirely based on interviews of with Hussein, his coworkers, fellow journalists and family members — sources who may well be biased in favor of Hussein and who may have no knowledge of information directly relevant to the investigation. 

Nor does the AP reportage detail Hussein’s account of how he came to be detained by US troops:

According to the account Hussein gave in interviews with lawyer Paul Gardephe, he was out buying bread when an explosion went off near his apartment. In the chaos, Hussein invited two men from the street into his apartment for shelter, offering them breakfast. These men would later be identified by the U.S. military as insurgents.

Soon, U.S. soldiers banged on the door to the shop below Hussein’s second-floor apartment, asking to come in. Once inside, the soldiers asked how to access the roof and apparently used the apartment to observe the street.

Hussein, by his account, took a nap. He was awoken by a soldier who took him through the building, including to a repair shop downstairs that contained electronics equipment. Against his protests, Hussein was photographed with the gear, which included cables, scrap copper and appliances to be repaired.

Soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded Hussein and his two guests and took them away for questioning. They seized Hussein’s computer and discs of photos, including shots that were never published. Hussein has been a prisoner ever since.

In short, he invited known al-Qaeda leader Hamid Hamad Motib and an associate into his home and served them breakfast, though they were strangers.  He also apparently admitted the US troops, then went off to take a nap, until said troops coincidentally discovered AQ noshing in the kitchen and decided to frame Hussein with forced photographs.  This may strike many as… improbable, which may explain why the AP is not widely advertising Hussein’s side of the story.

Nor is this the only weak spot of the AP’s vaunted inquiry into the Hussein case (which, for some reason, the AP posted as a difficult-to-excerpt Flash presentation).   For example, Bilal Hussein came to the attention of bloggers largely through these staged photographs of insurgents pointing their weapons at a wall on an empty street.  In the report, the AP’s lawyer specifically refers to these photos without any suggestion that they were controversial.  But I digress.

The AP’s coverage of the Hussein case also tends to avoid placing the proceedings against Hussein within the context of the Iraqi judicial system. 

Last week, the AP delivered a hit piece on the Iraqi judiciary, pegged to the imminent start of proceedings against Hussein, loaded with criticism from defense lawyers, including Ziad Najdawi, a Jordanian lawyer who helped lead Saddam Hussein’s defense team. 

The discussion of Iraqi court procedure is fragmented.  For example, the AP reports:

Iraq’s court system, like many in Europe, is inquisitional rather than adversarial.

Judges largely take on the role normally played by prosecutors in the United States. Initial hearings are key: An investigative judge decides the facts of the case, and weighs whether it should go to trial.

It’s a system that traces its roots to Napoleon and is used by many countries in Europe.

But eight paragraphs later, the AP adds this:

Mark Waller, a civilian attorney in Colorado and an Air Force reservist who served as a prosecutor in Iraq from March to July 2006, said the Iraqi system has a “common sense” foundation — with one judge listening to both sides. But the investigative judge’s wide powers — similar to a U.S. grand jury — also opens the system to corruption and shortcomings.

The AP does not make clear whether that last bit is Waller’s opinion, or the opinion of one of the seven reporters assigned to the story.

Moreover, as anyone familiar with grand juries in the US can tell you, the target of an investigation has far fewer rights at this opening stage than a defendant once charged with a crime.  Indeed:

The goal of both the adversarial system and the inquisitorial system is to find the truth. But the adversarial system seeks the truth by pitting the parties against each other in the hope that competition will reveal it, whereas the inquisitorial system seeks the truth by questioning those most familiar with the events in dispute. The adversarial system places a premium on the individual rights of the accused, whereas the inquisitorial system places the rights of the accused secondary to the search for truth.

In this context, the AP’s complaints that the defense attorney was not permitted to make copies of evidence, and that Sunday was the first time he heard specific charges against Hussein are really complaints against a type of judicial system common in Europe (and in international law), rather than the gross injustice which the AP is careful to imply without direct accusation.

Of course, as Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Bateman (who finds “conspiracy theorists” too gentle a term for the “consortium of right-wing bloggers” who have covered the Hussein case)  suggests, it could be that the AP “somehow believes that American public opinion is what really counts in the Iraqi justice system” and will tailor its coverage accordingly.

But that’s not the only possibility.  It is also possible that the AP’s chief concern is to discredit the Iraqi judiciary in global public opinion in the event that Hussein is found guilty, so that the AP would not have to admit to — at the very least — being gulled by a terrorist propagandist.  If Hussein is not charged by the investigative judge, or acquitted, one suspects the AP will not rush to run another feature on the broken Iraqi judiciary.  If history is any guide, the AP will certainly not mention just how difficult it is to convict an insurgent in the Iraqi courts.

However, in conclusion, I should note that whether Hussein is convicted is important, but not the central point of examining Hussein’s case as part of “The Big Picture(s).”  Rather, the central point is that a discussion of Hussein’s photos consumed about 20 disturbing paragraphs of Neil Munro’s National Journal piece on war fauxtography in 2006.  The problematic nature of his work was obvious prior to that article, yet the AP’s self-serving report pretends otherwise.  From here, the evidence that the AP should have exercised better judgment in hiring Hussein only mounts.  Hussein need not be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of aiding terrorists for anyone to reach that conclusion.  The AP’s slanted coverage of the case merely buttresses that conclusion.