All the News that Fit to Imprison

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From the International Justice Network website:

June 3, 2008, New York, NY—Attorneys from the International Justice Network (IJNetwork) filed a lawsuit today against the U.S. government seeking the release of 22-year old Canadian Television (CTV) journalist, Jawed Ahmad. Ahmad has been held incommunicado by the U.S. military for more than six months without charge at the notorious United States Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, where several confirmed instances of detainee abuse and deaths have occurred.


The lawsuit, filed as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief, was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against President George W. Bush and U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, alleging that the government is holding Ahmad illegally.

The U.S. Department of Defense has admitted that Ahmad is being held at Bagram, but has refused to disclose the reasons for his arrest and detention. Ahmad is one of several confirmed cases of foreign journalists illegally detained by the U.S. government as part of the “war on terror.” Earlier this year, on April 6, the U.S. government finally released Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Bilal Hussein after two years of military imprisonment without charge in Iraq, followed by the release, on May 1, of Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al Haj after five years of detention without charge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.