The Reuters Connection to Haditha

This is truly amazing - a major media organization with direct ties to major players in an incident in which 8 American soldiers are charged with murder and/or coverup. Yesterday I exposed the background of Majid Hameed, a Reuters reporter who had been incarcerated in Iraq due to questionable terrorist ties. Hameed wrote the Iraqis demanding justice story for Reuters on Friday 12/22.

Today while reviewing the excellent recap of Haditha reporting over at Euphoric Reality, I stumbled across a blurb about another Reuters reporter that was taken into custody along with Majid Hameed. This other Reuters employee's name is Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani.

Here's part of the post from Euphoric Reality...

"Now, let’s take a little closer look at one of the integral reporters who broke the Haditha story, courtesy of Sweetness and Light. It’s Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani, a Sunni who had been detained for five months because of images found on his camera and because of his “ties to the insurgents“. He had only been released a couple of weeks before he “stumbled upon” his big “scoop” on Haditha. (In fact, he had recently been arrested again, and was only released on May 31st.) Conveniently, Ali al-Mashhadani is the reporter who supplied video footage of the corpses that were supposedly killed by the Marines. His video footage is solely responsible for prompting the investigation by the military."

Then there is this tidbit from the awesome Sweetness & Light...

“What is the relationship if any between this news-making journalist Ali al-Mashhadani and Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani of Iraq’s Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy? [Abdel] al-Mashhadani is the person who first brought these “human rights violations” to public attention. And how odd it is that Abdel Rahman al-Mashhadani just happened to be given a video by an “unnamed local”. And that he then turned it over to Ali al-Mashhadani who just happens to make videos for Reuters. And had anyone ever heard of Iraq’s Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy before this?”

Now keep in mind that Euphoric Reality and Sweetness & Light originally uncovered the al-Mashhadani connections back in June 2006 - six months ago. Yet none of these connections are brought up in the media coverage of the Haditha charges.

Two Reuters' reporters with questionable ties to terrorists, both arrested at the same time and both with their fingers in the Haditha story... Now tell me again why I should believe anything reported in the media concerning Haditha, much less Iraq?