Jim Hanson of Pajamas Media reports:
AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week.
Hussein was in his house with Hamid Hamad Motib, a known al-Qaeda leader, last year when Marines wanted to use the house as an observation point. They determined Motib’s identity and status as a wanted terrorist and took both him and Hussein into custody. They also recovered a number of items that led them to believe that Hussein was involved in insurgent activities. The US will now provide the evidence it has to the Iraqi government.
[...]
Bilal Hussein had free reign [sic] to be anywhere and was often taking pictures in the company of insurgents and terrorists. He and the other stringers who made up AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo team managed to capture assassinations as they happened. They were on site at bombings within seconds to capture the carnage almost as it happened.
This access and the number of false reports of civilian deaths led the information operations staff to take note. They began monitoring Hussein more closely for two reasons: one they were tasked with countering or debunking false claims of civilian casualties and atrocities, second because Hussein’s very tight relations with the insurgents could be used against the Marines themselves.
The photo to the right was taken by Balil Hussein. It appears to show Italian hostage Salvatore Santoro shortly before he was executed. The Associated Press tries to defend Hussein by copping to a different journalistic no-no: that the photo was staged after Santoro’s execution.
Either way, Hussein had remarkable access to terrorists, and he routinely supplied photographs to AP that were useful propaganda for insurgents. By AP’s own admission, he dutifully waited while insurgents staged an execution scene, proving that he was an active participant in generating their propaganda.
So even if you give the Associated Press the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is that their own evidence shows that Hussein was a willing tool of the insurgents.
Was he more than that?
Iraqi authorities will be seeking a verdict on that question soon enough.
