Steve Centanni

On Thursday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC, correspondent Steve Centanni filed a report updating viewers on the case of one of the Navy SEALs facing charges in military court following accusations of prisoner abuse by the terrorist who planned the notorious murder of several American contractors in Fallujah in 2004.

Centanni relayed the acquittal of one of the accused troops: "Julio Huertas is one of the three Navy SEALs charged in connection with the arrest of a terror suspect last September in Iraq, and he was the first to stand trial. Today, just outside Baghdad, Huertas was found not guilty by a jury of six men who deliberated for two hours."

The FNC correspondent later raised the possibility that the prisoner in question, Ahmed Hashim Abed, may have caused injury to himself to support false accusations, as a soundbite of a defense attorney for one of the accused Navy SEALs was shown:

In the past several days, FNC has given attention to the plight of three Navy SEALs who helped capture one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq – a man named Ahmed Hashim Abed who is believed to have planned the savage murder of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah in 2004. Due to accusations of prisoner abuse by Abed, these American troops are now facing the possibility of court-martial. On Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier, correspondent Steve Centanni began his report:

It was March of 2004. Fallujah was a hotbed of insurgent activity. Four Blackwater contractors were ambushed and killed. Their bodies were mutilated and burned, then dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The man believed to have planned that attack, Ahmed Hashim Abed ... had long evaded capture. But when a team of Navy SEALs finally did catch up with him in September of this year, they weren't hailed as heroes. Instead, three of them were brought up on charges.

Fox and Friends also raised the story Wednesday morning, and Thursday’s show delved further into the matter as former JAG officer and defense attorney Tom Kenniff appeared as a guest and argued that the accusations of abuse are consistent with al-Qaeda’s practice of advising its members to level false accusations of abuse against American troops if captured. Kenniff: