Reuters photographer remains in jail

In a continuing clash between Reuters and coalition authorities in Iraq, a review board consisting of 9 people -- 6 of them Iraqis -- determined that Reuters photographer and cameraman Ali Omar Abrehem al-Mashhadani should remain in Abu Ghraib. He is considered a threat to security.

Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, director of the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad said about security risks.

"If the same journalist, say, continues to pop up prior to explosions or attacks consistently, and it comes to someone's attention," that could be cause for suspicion, he says. Evidence of explosive residue on a person's clothes would be another.

"If you happen to be a journalist in the wrong place at the wrong time, the process will bear that out and you will be released," Boylan says.

They aren't releasing Ali, which speaks volumes. And if you wonder why the Reuters news there is so slanted, there is this to consider: According to Barry Moody, Reuters' editor for the Middle East and Africa. "Of the 66 journalists Reuters currently employs in Iraq, 60 are Iraqi."

On Sunday night "a Reuters TV crew came under fire by U.S. forces as they drove to the scene of a shooting. Soundman Waleed Khaled was killed and cameraman Haider Kadhem was slightly wounded, questioned and released." There is such a thing as being too close to the action. If someone is too stupid to know it, or are there because they want to document Americans being shot at, they deserve to die.