A headline like that would seem to be very good news for The Associated Press, which has been working to free Bilal Hussein, the wire’s Pulitzer prize-winning Iraqi photographer, from U.S. custody for over two years. The Army has variously alleged that Hussein was in possession of weapons and bomb parts, only to walk back the claims and accuse him of having foreknowledge of an armed attack. And they’ve kept their supposed evidence secret.
But like so much in Iraq, it’s not clear what this dismissal means. It’s not a finding of innocence—the allegations were, it seems, found to be nullified by a recent amnesty law. And the judges’ ruling is not binding on the U.S. So if the army still thinks that Hussein is a security threat, they’ll just go ahead and keep him under lock and key.
Indeed an Army spokesman once told AJR that any Iraqi trial would merely be “in addition to and parallel to” whatever the military might do.
I’m sure the AP is happy to finally have a victory, no matter how fleeting or ambiguous it may be. (And there’s some reason for hope: as Harper’s Scott Horton points out, an Iraqi CBS cameraman who’d been similarly detained by the Army was released after an Iraqi court dismissed his case.) But, as sad as it is to say, let’s wait and see before breaking out the cigars.
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.