U.S. holds AP photographer 5 mos, no charges

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer, Bilal Hussein, for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

"The vast majority of the 420 images show the aftermath or the results of the conflict — blown up houses, wounded people, dead people, street scenes."

He won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last year. With this in mind, we see that he is photgraphing scenes in Iraq that are potentially bad for the Bush Administrations's image. From this we can conclude why he has been held for so long but never charged with a crime.