However, advertising in newspapers grew by only 1 per cent during this period.

“The increase in number of magazines catering to specific target groups has helped the rise in volume of advertising in magazines. The fragmentation has led to a better access to target market for advertisers and increased purchasing power has set off this massive increase in magazine advertising,” explained Siddhartha Mukherjee, vice-president, communications, TAM Media Research.

Advertising in magazines rose by 55 per cent in January-September 2007 compared with the advertising during the same period in 2004.

Women and current affairs magazines had the maximum advertising share, while advertising grew the fastest in the fashion and lifestyle segment between January and September 2007. Monthly magazines attracted most of the advertisements, with an ad ratio of 70:30 for English and regional magazines respectively.

According to the study, publications dedicated to women, business and current affairs enjoyed a combined share of 52 per cent of the total ad volume in magazines during the period under review compared with the numbers in the same period in 2004.

In the women’s segement, 40 magazines contributed to 22 per cent of the total ad volumes, while 35 current affairs magazines had a share of 21 per cent during the first three quarters of 2007.

Of the 23 magazine categories surveyed, 16 showed growth in advertising volumes in the first three quarters of 2007.

Although there was a dip in the number of magazines in the fashion and lifestyle category, it showed the maximum growth of 210 per cent in terms of advertising in the first 9 months of 2007 compared with the growth in the same period of 2004.

Media and advertising and city-centric magazines were the two other fastest-growing genres. Volume of advertisements in these categories grew 120 per cent and 110 per cent respectively during the period.

The study also showed that advertisers focused more on monthly magazines, which enjoyed 44 per cent of all advertising in magazines. This was followed by weekly magazines with a 31 per cent share and fortnightly publications making up 22 per cent of the ad volumes.

English language magazines enjoyed 69 per cent ad volumes as opposed to regional language publications, which contributed to 31 per cent of advertisements.

The top five sectors — services, personal accessories, media, banking and finance and auto — combined to contribute to 42 per cent of all advertisements placed in magazines.

“You have to adjust to the marketplace,” said Jim Kennedy, The A.P.’s vice president for strategic planning. “The new generation of consumers has completely different habits.”

To feed those habits and manage the news cycle more efficiently, The A.P. will change the way it files, edits and distributes stories, opening at least four regional editing hubs as part of a plan it calls AP2.0.

It is also expanding its multimedia packages for entertainment, business and sports reports. And the company is moving toward an all-digital platform it calls the “Digital Cooperative.”

The changes, The A.P. believes, will counter what hampered some of its rivals, like Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters, which, over the last decade, have cut their staffs as revenues have fallen.

Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.’s executive editor, said the company’s responsibility was to “preserve our future, so that we can continue to provide news from remote places,” and to “rev up our journalism” to make it compelling to customers.

The idea behind the regional hubs, which mimic an overhaul of The A.P.’s foreign operations earlier in the decade, is to reduce editing gridlock at its major filing desks, including that in New York. The regional hubs will handle coverage in their areas, and the New York desk will focus on “the stories that are the tip top of the day,” Ms. Carroll said.

Mr. Kennedy said another goal was to get editors in the regional bureaus back into reporting, which would increase the amount of content, and to reduce the number of people who work on an article during a news cycle.

Some employees, however, are wondering what these changes, particularly the new regional editing hubs, will mean for them.

“People are definitely jittery,” said Tony Winton, an A.P. broadcast correspondent based in Miami and the president of the News Media Guild, which represents A.P. workers. “It’s really hard to react to everything because the details have been so thin.”

The company has assured the guild that no layoffs are planned, and Ms. Carroll said The A.P. was still evaluating staff needs in each bureau, although some employees might have to move.

“I think anybody who’s in an editing job now is probably looking at some kind of change to their work,” Ms. Carroll said.

But Mr. Winton wondered what would happen to an editor whose regular position was moved to one of the regional hubs. “I think most of our members understand The A.P. has to stay competitive. We get that,” he said. “But this sort of cone of silence we’re under isn’t helping.”

Ms. Carroll acknowledged the uncertainty. “I think what’s frustrating for some people is that the answers to some of their questions just aren’t known yet,” she said. “And journalists are skeptics.”

Although The A.P. has expanded its staff over the last few years to nearly 4,100 employees, its rivals have struggled as the newspapers and newsrooms they served have shrunk. Reuters, the London-based wire service, cut 3,000 jobs in 2003 alone. United Press International, the onetime giant that fostered the careers of Walter Cronkite and Helen Thomas, has withered to a bare-bones operation in Washington and has been controlled by a company owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, since 2000.

The A.P.’s nonprofit status means it does not have to worry about falling stock prices and testy shareholders. But like any business, it depends on income for its survival, and is looking more toward advertising for revenue, Mr. Kennedy said.

In October, the company revised its prices for premium content, like multimedia offerings. Content also includes an invisible watermark, so the company can trace an article to see if it is being used without permission.

“They’re very much hawks on charging for it,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. “And why not? Because that’s the premise of their business. You’ve got to pay for it if you’re going to use it.”

Officials of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Jeffrey Arenburg, 50, of Barrie, was on a bus crossing the border at the Peace Bridge on Thursday when the incident occurred.

Arenburg, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, was found not criminally responsible for the slaying of Ottawa sports broadcaster Brian Smith in August 1995. He had been held in a mental institution after Smith’s murder, and released just a year ago.

Smith’s widow, Alana Kainz, who was reached outside the country, was alarmed when told of the incident.

“This is what I’ve been saying for years – this man continues to be dangerous,” she said in a telephone interview.

“I thought it’d be sooner than this, actually. It didn’t take him long to show his violent tendencies.”

He has a history of getting off his medication, she added.

U.S. border officials said that on Thursday, Arenburg told officers he was going shopping in the Buffalo area. However, document checks revealed that Arenburg had been denied entry to the U.S. several times previously because of his criminal record, the officials said.

When he was told he would again be denied entry, an officer was punched in the face, officials said.

Arenburg was subdued by other officers, arrested, charged with assault on an officer and jailed to await today’s court appearance.

In 1995, Smith was shot as he walked through the television station’s parking lot on his way to a children’s charity event.

Evidence at subsequent hearings revealed that Arenburg had gone to the station because he thought the facility was broadcasting messages in his head. Smith just happened to be the first person that he recognized.

The crime shocked the normally quiet capital, and the news that his killer was again involved in a violent incident “is going to shake everyone here up,” said Kimothy Walker, who is a news anchor on CTV News in Ottawa.

“We were highly alarmed because his behaviour is what we’ve all been afraid of for years … Our concern is that he’ll return to his violent behaviour. We have always worried he might come back here.”

Kainz, who has in the past expresses sympathy for Arenburg’s mental condition, said Thursday’s incident shows he still needs psychiatric help and issued a plea to U.S. authorities.

“Please do not release him at this point. Somebody needs to take care of him, so he doesn’t go off and kill someone.”

“Staff at La Tribune, who have been on strike since November 29, have just voted (72 percent) to suspend their movement,” the unions said in a statement.

Luxury goods group LVMH has decided to sell La Tribune after agreeing to buy rival French business newspaper Les Echos from Financial Times publisher Pearson Plc (PSON.L: Quote, Profile, Research).

LVMH is headed by France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, and his planned takeover of Les Echos led to protests by its journalists, who were concerned about the newspaper’s editorial integrity following such a deal.

The trade unions representing La Tribune staff said employees would hold talks with LVMH executive Nicolas Bazire on Tuesday to discuss their future, and added they reserved the right to resume their strike in the future.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, editing by Will Waterman)

Young boys and girls surf in the internet in Carlsbad in California, October 2007. Nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video in May and viewed more than 8.3 billion video streams, according to research by comScore. Additionally, wireless devices such as cell phones, Blackberrys and gaming accessories provide consumers ever-increasing access to the Internet, exponentially accelerating consumption of Internet bandwidth according to the Nemertes study. (AFP/File/Gabriel Bouys)

The ‘Internet Singularity, Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web’, a study conducted by Nemertes Research, indicates that Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.

The financial investment required to “bridge the gap” between demand and capacity ranges from $42 billion to $55 billion in the US, primarily to be spent on broadband access capacity; this is roughly 60-70 per cent above and beyond the $72 billion service providers are already planning to invest. Required investment globally is estimated at $137 billion, again primarily in broadband access.

“This groundbreaking analysis identifies a critical issue facing the Internet – that we must take the necessary steps to build out network capacity or potentially face Internet gridlock that could wreak havoc on Internet services,” said Larry Irving, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance. “It’s important to note that even if we make the investment necessary between now and 2010, we still might not be prepared for the next killer application or new internet-dependent business like Google or YouTube. The Nemertes study is evidence the exaflood is coming.”

Voice and bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming and interactive video, peer-to-peer file transfer and music downloads and file sharing are redefining the Internet. Nearly 75 per cent of US Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video in May and viewed more than 8.3 billion video streams, according to research by comScore. Additionally, wireless devices such as cell phones, Blackberrys and gaming accessories provide consumers ever-increasing access to the Internet, exponentially accelerating consumption of Internet bandwidth according to the Nemertes study.

To analyse the demand and capacity factors across geographies, Nemertes Research created a detailed model of Internet infrastructure capacity and user demand based on:

• Research data and Internet traffic statistics collected by academic organizations such as CAIDA and MINTS
• User demand data from a variety of sources, such as Pew Research and the Center for The Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School
• Publicly-available documents, including vendor/service provider financials
• 70+ confidential interviews with enterprise organizations, equipment vendors, service providers, and investment companies
• Interviews with the several hundred IT executives who regularly participate in Nemertes’ enterprise benchmarks. Investment figures from service providers and telecom equipment manufacturers.

The findings indicate that by 2010, the Internet’s capacity will not likely accommodate user demand. As a result, users could increasingly encounter Internet “brownouts” or interruptions to the applications they’ve become accustomed to using on the internet. For example, it may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube. Overall, the impact of this inadequate infrastructure will be primarily to slow down the pace of innovation. The next Amazon, Google or YouTube might not arise — not from a lack of user demand, but because of insufficient infrastructure preventing applications and companies from emerging.

The study — comprising both a detailed quantitative model and a 70-page report — assessed user demand and Internet infrastructure independently. Rather than measuring current traffic patterns, it measured how user demand would evolve if Internet capacity was not limited.

“This is the first study to independently model both Internet capacity and demand,” said Johna Till Johnson, president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research. “The Internet is inherently self-protecting — you can’t push more traffic onto the ‘Net than it can handle. This means that studies which focus just on growth rates of existing traffic on the Internet miss the issue of how much more traffic could be appearing on the ‘Net — based on the measured demand by business and consumer users — if Internet capacity were sufficient to accommodate it.”

The Internet consists of a series of privately built and owned interconnected networks. Like the physical transportation system, which includes freeways as well as country roads, the Internet consists of high-speed connections (fiber and underground cable) and lower-speed links (copper and coaxial connections), with traffic handled by switching equipment.

As with the physical transportation system, an Internet user’s experience is defined by both the capacity of the high-speed connections (the “core”) and the lower-speed links. If the freeway is empty, but local roads are congested, users will spend most of their time stuck in traffic at the edges — something the study predicts will occur with increasing frequency starting in 2010.

“How we use the Internet today is fundamentally different than it was even three years ago, with the advent of bandwidth-intensive applications like video-on-demand,” said Bruce Mehlman, co-chair of IIA. “We need to take steps now to ensure continued improvement of the broadband infrastructure in North America meets the projected demand. To encourage the necessary investment to ensure a positive user experience, it is important for the right tax, commercial and policy environment to be in place. The internet is a critical global resource and our hope is that this study helps us understand what can and should be done today to ensure its integrity and usability for generations to come.”

Nemertes’ research initiatives, including this study, are funded by its client base of Fortune 2000 enterprise organisations, vendors, service providers, and not-for-profit organizations including the Internet Innovation Alliance, which purchased distribution rights to these research findings.

In its ruling for the German reporter, Hans-Martin Tillack, the European Court of Human Rights said Tuesday that the right to protect the identity of sources is an essential pillar of freedom of the press. Though the court ruled against Belgium, rather than the European Union institutions, its decision is an embarrassment to the union, which has been trying to clean up its act since the mass resignation of the European Commission in 1999 over accusations of cronyism, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

On Wednesday, Tillack said that the ruling supported his claims that the authorities were more determined to identify the source of an embarrassing leak than to confront the abuses it appeared to reveal.

According to the International Press Institute (IPI), in early 2002, Hans-Martin Tillack, then the Brussels-correspondent for Stern (Star) magazine, published two articles critical of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), an agency responsible for investigating fraud in institutions of the European Union.

OLAF subsequently accused Tillack of obtaining some of his information by bribing a civil servant within the agency, and filed a complaint with Belgian judicial authorities. The agency’s allegations, later held to be “misleading” by the European Ombudsman, prompted a police raid of the journalist’s home and workplace in March of 2004. Multiple boxes of files, two computers and several mobile telephones were seized during the searches.

Tillack lodged an application with the ECtHR in May 2005, maintaining that the searches constituted a constitutional violation. In its judgment, issued on November 27, 2007, the court agreed, holding unanimously that the raid violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression.

The court noted that it was “evident” that the real purpose of the searches was to identify the journalist’s source, especially given that Tillack was never formally charged for the alleged bribery. It added that a journalist’s right to protect his or her sources was not a “mere privilege” but “part and parcel of the right to information,” and therefore had to be treated with “utmost caution”. The court awarded Tillack damages of EUR 10,000, as well as EUR 30,000 for incurred costs and expenses.

Tillack, now an investigative political reporter for Stern in Berlin, acknowledged the changes to Belgian law, but he said that the judgment sent an important message.

IPI welcomed teh judgment. “This case serves as an important reminder that investigative journalists are particularly vulnerable to ill-motivated accusations aimed at identifying the sources of sensitive information rather than any presumed illegal activity,” said IPI Director Johann P Fritz. “The court’s clear condemnation of such activity is a welcome reaffirmation of the press’s right to perform its work without undue interference, governmental or otherwise and a forthright rejection of brazen fishing expeditions.”

“At last this shocking violation of journalists’ rights has been rectified,” said Aidan White, European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) General Secretary, who in 2004 sat alongside Tillack, while Belgian police trawled through boxes of his personal files in an efforts to find a whistleblower inside the European Commission who had fed him information about financial scandals. “Now we want to know who ordered the police to be called in and why have the Belgian police taken so long to come up with a report.”

EFJ, which supported Tillack in court cases against the Commission and in his appeal to the European Court, said the judgement once again reinforces the protection given by European law to journalists to protect their sources and against unlawful seizure of their material.

EFJ says that a full report of who authorised the action against Tillack and who delivered the demands to the Belgian police to investigate him must be made by the European Union Anti-Fraud agency OLAF. “It’s time for OLAF to tell the full story,” said White. “We can only draw a line under this case when we know that action has been taken to ensure this sort of vindictive acation against a reporter some people found troublesome will never be repeated.”

The case shocked journalists working in the Brussels’ press corps and increased fears within the European journalists’ community that government officials and national police forces have increasing disregard for protection of journalists’ sources.

Sri Lankan troops in Colombo, November 2007. Twenty-seven people were killed in fresh fighting in Sri Lanka’s embattled northeast, the military said on Saturday, marking the latest violence in the long-running ethnic conflict.(AFP/File)

“Voice of Tigers is a propaganda radio operated by the LTTE rebels, but the rules of war are clear — military bombardment and bombing must be limited to strictly military targets,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “The government in Colombo uses the Geneva Conventions to condemn LTTE crimes but forgets the conventions when it bombs what is a civilian installation and therefore protected by the conventions.”

The air strike on Voice of Tigers, located near Kilinochchi, took place in the afternoon and left a total of nine civilians dead (including three of the station’s employees) and around 10 civilians wounded. The Tamilnet website identified the dead employees as Isaivizhi Chempiyan (a former presenter), Suresh Linbiyo (a technician) and T Tharmalingam.

The bombing was carried out as the station was providing coverage of the annual War Heroes’ Day ceremonies, which LTTE observes in the regions it controls. According to Tamilnet, broadcasts were able to continue with the help of another clandestine transmitter.

The Sri Lankan military confirmed that the air force had destroyed the “clandestine Tiger terrorists radio station” in Kilinochchi. Previous air strikes in October 2006 caused serious damage to the station and wounded two employees.

“IFJ strongly believes that all media workers, regardless of the views of the organisations for which they work, must be regarded as non-combatants in conflict zones,” said the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)’s Asia-Pacific Director, Jacqueline Park. “While we do not endorse or support the views of any particular media organisation, we strongly denounce the bombing of VOT as an attack on freedom of speech and a serious violation of international law.”

The Sri Lankan Air Force launched a similar attack on a VOT radio tower on October 17, 2006. At that time IFJ called on Sri Lanka’s Government to act in accordance with its obligations under Article 79 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention to respect the safety of journalists as non-combatant civilians. “IFJ again calls on the Government of Sri Lanka to abide by its commitments under the Geneva Convention and refrain from deliberate attacks that endanger the lives of civilians, including media workers,” Park said.

The Berne-based International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (created under Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions), told RSF last year: “Deliberate attacks against journalists and infrastructure belonging to or used by the press constitute a serious violation of international law. Journalists have the right to perform their role in territories where fighting is taking place.”

News media in other countries have been targeted as “propaganda media,” setting very dangerous precedents for the press. NATO bombed Serbian radio and TV headquarters in Belgrade in April 1999, killing 16 employees. The Israeli military blew up the Voice of Palestine radio and TV building in Ramallah, on the West Bank, in January 2001. And the Kabul bureau of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera was the target of a US air strike on November 12, 2001.

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev passes by the guard of honor during a welcoming ceremony before his meeting with his Hungarian counterpart Laszlo Solyom, not seen, in Budapest, Hungary Friday, November 23, 2007. Nazarbayev arrived to Hungary Friday for a two-day long official visit to meet top Hungarian politicians. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

The oil-rich Central Asian state will occupy the chair in 2010 — one year later than it had sought, OSCE Deputy Spokesperson Virginie Coulloudon told Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (REF/RL) in Madrid just after the two-day summit’s final press conference Friday. The United States (US) reportedly gave its backing after securing a Kazakh “pledge” that Astana would “protect” the OSCE’s election-monitoring body, whose role Russia had proposed to alter.

Kazakhstan was ranked 125th out of 169 countries in this year’s Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) world press freedom index. The decision has been condemned by RSF.

“A country where press freedom stops as soon as the president or ruling party is called into question is not an appropriate choice to preside the OSCE, an organisation that defends democratic values,” RSF said. “We are disturbed by the thought of a Kazakh presidency as it could undermine the work of an organisation whose work until now has earned a great deal of respect.”

Cases of journalists being harassed are common in Kazakhstan. There has been no let-up in the pressure on government opponents and journalists in recent month. Blockage of opposition websites, obstruction of the printing and distribution of independent newspapers and confiscation of newspaper issues critical of the government were among the free speech violations noted by OSCE last year.

Abusive use is often made of the laws governing media activity, and opposition access to the press is limited. Journalists are subjected to violence, intimidation and abuse of authority. The editor of an opposition weekly, Batyrkhan Darimbet, died on August 2 in very suspicious circumstances and may have been killed because of articles criticising the authorities.

Kazakhstan would be the first former Soviet republic to head OSCE. Most of the European countries, including Germany and France, supported Kazakhstan’s candidacy, arguing that it embarked on serious democratic reforms this year. Britain and the United States did not express the same degree of support because they think its democratic record is deplorable.

Reelected with 91 per cent of the vote, President Nursultan Nazarbayev is an autocrat. Political pluralism is non-existent. Kazakhstan’s failure to meet international standards were yet again highlighted in an OSCE report in August.

“We are obviously relieved to learn that the Kawwaz family is safe and sound but this journalist’s behaviour is unacceptable,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We are appalled by this deceit, which is not only sordid but also dangerous as it obscures the fact that the families of dozens of journalists have been exposed to violence by Iraq’s armed groups.”

RSF added, “A great many journalists have had to abandon everything in recent years – their homes and their loved ones – in order to seek refuge abroad. This case must not be allowed to undermine the credibility of the ordeals they describe.”

Journalists with Al-Hurra TV met Wednesday in Baghdad with members of the Kawwaz family, who denied Dia al-Kawwaz’s claims and said he must have done it “to obtain money from abroad.” Many Jordanian dignitaries attended a wake organised by Kawwaz in Amman on November 26.

When RSF contacted Kawwaz he was evasive about the alleged incident and could not name the relatives who had supposedly been killed. Questioned several times by Agence France-Presse, he was unable to give the exact address of the family home where the massacre allegedly took place or where the victims were supposedly buried.

On the website of the online newspaper he edits, Shabeqat Akhbar al-Iraq, he said his family had been “pressured to deny the facts.”

Kawwaz’s claim had been quickly denied by Iraqi interior ministry spokesman Gen Abdul Karim Khalaf. “It is a lie,” he said. “Nothing of the sort happened. We always investigate murders of this nature.” Another government spokesman said he had contacted Kawwaz’s mother in Baghdad.

Salt Lake Tribune national security reporter Matthew D LaPlante, centre left, and Iraqi photojournalist Bilal Hussein, centre right, converse with other journalists outside the Ramadi Government Center in Iraq in September, 2005. US military officials have alleged that Hussein, 36, detained in Ramadi on April 12, 2006, had links to terrorist groups. The officials have refused to disclose the evidence against him. (AP Photo/The Salt Lake Tribune, Rick Egan)

A public affairs officer had notified AP last week that the military intended to submit a written complaint against Hussein as early as November 29. There was no explanation for the change in the date. Under Iraqi law, an investigating judge will receive and review the evidence. The judge, whose role corresponds roughly to a grand jury, has the power to either dismiss the case or recommend it be referred to a three-judge panel for trial.

The court hearing at the Central Criminal Court of Iraq will decide whether there is enough evidence against Hussein to proceed to trial. A Photo District News article earlier this week described the court system as overloaded and rushed, controlled by Shiites, and biased against Suunis such as Hussein.

Pentagon says that it believes Hussein is a “terrorist media operative”, but it has refused to provide any evidence for the accusation, or to even detail the charges that will be brought against him. He and his lawyer will only learn of the charges at the same hearing that they will be expected to present a defence.

However, the US military has indicated that even if he is found innocent, they will still have the right to keep him in prison. If this were to happen, it would confirm suspicions that the US military is willing to arrest and imprison journalists in Iraq who produce photographs deemed to be “unhelpful” to the American war effort. Around one in every 25 of those acquitted in the Iraqi courts continue to be detained by US forces.

“If we deem [Hussein] a threat to the security and stability of Iraq and we decide to detain him further we will do that,” Major Brad Leighton, spokesperson for the Multi-National Force in Iraq, told Photo District News. According to figures obtained by the New York Times, around one in every 25 of those acquitted in the Iraqi courts continue to be detained indefinitely by the US forces. While many journalists in Iraq have been detained by US forces on similar charges to Hussein, most have been released without charge after a couple of months, even when some had known links to insurgents.

Fallujah had become a place where car bombs were rigged, terror attacks planned, and kidnap victims taken for their final terrifying days before they were beheaded before video cameras. As fighting escalated in November 2004, Hussein produced images from inside the city — including a picture of insurgents firing on coalition forces that was to win him a share of a Pulitzer Prize.

Officials at Camp Cropper, where Hussein is currently being held have reportedly admitted that their evidence against him on most of the charges is “weak”, but say they have “irrefutable proof” of his involvement in supplying a false ID card and of conspiring with insurgents to photograph explosions. According to AP, none of Bilal’s 900 submitted photographs over his 20-month employment with AP including explosions.

According to an AP investigation into his arrest, a US interrogator told Hussein: “Your photos present a threat to us”. Referring to photographs taken shortly before his arrest, he allegedly stated: “Do you know what would happen if these photographs were shown in the US ? There would be huge demonstrations and we would have to leave Iraq. This is why you won’t be released.”

The photographer is just one of 18,000 Iraqis currently being held by the US military without charge for “security reasons”. Despite his detention, Hussein has not been interviewed by US or Iraqi authorities since May 2006.

Hussein, 36, who was part of AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning team in 2005 was arrested in April 2006 at his apartment in Ramadi. Initial reports stated that when arrested he was living in a barricaded derelict building with two insurgency leaders. The reports said that Hussein was found with bomb making equipment and a weapons cache.

However, it has since emerged that he was living alone in his fully furnished flat, that there were no explosives or weapons there, and the building was not barricaded. Hussein had let the US soldiers into the building so that they could monitor the street below after a nearby explosion.

Tom Curley’s letter to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: “We believe the real reason for Mr Hussein’s detention and incarceration for 19 months without charges is the he produced images of conflict in Anbar Province which the military did not want the citizens of Iraq and the United States to see.”

The US military pointed to a range of suspicions that attempt to link Hussein to insurgent activity, including claims that he offered to provide false identification to a sniper seeking to evade US-led forces and took photographs that were synchronized with insurgent blasts.

AP’s own inquiry found no support for either of those claims. The bulk of the photographs Hussein provided AP were not about insurgent activity; he detailed both the aftermath of attacks and the daily lives of Iraqis in the war zone. There was no evidence that any images were coordinated with the insurgents or showed the instant of an attack.

In a letter delivered last week to Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said the AP believes “the real reason for Hussein’s detention and incarceration for 19 months without charges is that he produced images of conflict in Anbar Province which the military did not want the citizens of Iraq and the United States to see.” The letter also expressed concern that Hussein’s attorney had not been given enough time and information to prepare an adequate defense.

“While we are grateful that Hussein will finally have a chance to see and challenge the evidence against him, we are deeply concerned that US military authorities are doing their best to make it difficult for his case to receive a fair hearing,” Curley wrote.

“That Hussein has been held for over 19 months without charge and on the pretext of unsubstantiated, shifting allegations is deeply alarming,” said Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Executive Director Joel Simon. “While we welcome the military’s belated attempt to give him his day in court, we are equally alarmed that he continues to be denied due process and that his legal team has no idea what the evidence is against him so they can prepare a proper defence.”

On Wednesday, the Military Reporters & Editors released an open letter it sent to the Pentagon protesting the long confinement of Hussein without the bringing of any charges and calling on the US government to “do the right thing and give Hussein his day in court.” It said, “Bilal Hussein’s imprisonment is contrary to every notion of justice, fair play and the US Constitution, which every member of America’s military swears to uphold and defend.”

“We at Military Reporters & Editors wonder how this incident has been allowed to go on for so long,” the letter said. “We also wonder if it could happen to other Iraqi journalists who have risked their lives to tell America and the world about life in Iraq. Without their work we would know far less about the fighting there and how it affects both the millions of Iraqis and the thousands American troops, and for that matter, the world.

An insurgent carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher takes up position in Ramadi, March 9, 2005. Insurgents controlled the city streets, causing shops to close and the streets to empty of civilians fearing possible clashes. Photo by Bilal Hussein.

Hussein’s detention is not an isolated incident. Over the last three years, dozens of journalists—mostly Iraqis — have been detained by US troops, according to CPJ research. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by US forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction.

In one highly publicised case, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, a freelance cameraman working for CBS, was detained after being wounded by US military fire as he filmed clashes in Mosul in northern Iraq on April 5, 2005. US military officials claimed footage in his camera led them to suspect Hussein had prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces. In April 2006, a year after his arrest, Hussein was freed after an Iraqi criminal court, citing a lack of evidence, acquitted him of collaborating with insurgents.