Two journalists, one a kidnapping victim, the other held in detention by US forces, won their liberty on Monday.
Richard Butler, a British photographer working for CBS who was kidnapped two months ago, was freed when Iraqi soldiers burst into a house in central Basra and found him bound and with a bag over his head.
On Monday afternoon, US military officials announced that they would release Bilal Hussein, a photographer for the Associated Press who had been held for two years on allegations of aiding insurgents. Hussein will be released from US military custody today, the US military command in Baghdad said in a statement.
“After the action by the Iraqi judicial committees, we reviewed the circumstances of Hussein’s detention and determined that he no longer presents an imperative threat to security,” said US Major General Douglas Stone, the deputy commander for detainee operations.
Butler, 47, was thin but in good condition and laughing as he was shown on Iraqi state television hugging well-wishers and greeting beaming Iraqi officials.
“Thank you and I’m looking forward to seeing my family and my friends at CBS and thank you again,” said Butler, who was working as a producer for 60 Minutes when he was kidnapped.
“I’m pretty weak and I’ve lost quite a bit of weight,” he said later. “I’m looking forward to a decent meal.’
After the broadcast, Butler, who along with an Iraqi interpreter was kidnapped from the Sultan Palace Hotel in Basra, was taken to the British Consulate for medical examination, a spokesman there said. The interpreter was released Feb. 13.
Staff Lieutenant General Mohan al-Fraiji, of the Iraqi army’s operations center in Basra, said soldiers in the 14th Division had stumbled on Butler during a house raid for weapons in the city’s Jubayla area.
The man guarding Butler was arrested, he said, but security forces were still seeking three gunmen who fled the house before the soldiers entered.
But General Jalil Khalaf, chief of the Basra police, said the army had received a tip that the journalist was hidden in a house in the area, “and immediately a force from the army went to this area and found the journalist and released him.”
CBS issued a statement saying, “We are incredibly grateful that our colleague Richard Butler has been released and is safe.”
Hussein was detained April 12, 2006, after US Marines entered his house in Ramadi to establish a temporary observation post and allegedly found bomb-making materials, insurgent propaganda and a surveillance photograph of a US military installation.
The US military presented evidence against him to an Iraqi investigative judge last November.
AP executives, defending Hussein as a journalist doing his job, have argued that the US military detained Hussein because his photographs showed things they did not want the public to see.
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