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If a picture is worth 1,000 words, it can stir quite a ruckus when none of those words are particularly flattering. For the U.S. armed forces, the answer to the problem is simple: disappear the photographer into the same legal quagmire usually reserved for Guantanamo detainees. Such has been the fate of Associated Press photo-journalist Bilal Hussein, who was arrested 19 months ago in Ramadi, Iraq, shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize as part of a team photographing insurgent mortar attacks.

“We believe Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government does not want its people to see,” says AP president and CEO Tom Curley. Hussein told his lawyer that Marine interrogators said his pics “posed a threat to us,” and offered to supplement his income with work as a mole within the media. Though no actual charges have been made known, the military has leaked a series of ever-changing accusations, all of which have fallen apart under scrutiny.

The U.S. recently announced they’d be filing a complaint against Hussein in an Iraqi court sometime after Nov. 29, and promised to phone AP’s Baghdad bureau the morning of the hearing. AP’s legal team has gone to Baghdad to await the call.

by Scott Saxon