FIVE AMERICANS HELD IN IRAQ AS INSURGENTS

Relatives of Cyrus Kar of Los Angeles

This story just in today from the Washington Post: 5 Americans Held By U.S. Forces In Iraq Fighting. The ACLU has filed suit today in behalf of one of the Americans being held by the US in Iraq, the film-maker Cyrus Kar of Los Angeles.

The five being held are the first Americans being held under charges of aiding/abetting/participating in the Iraqi insurgency. Three are Iraqi Americans, one is Iranian American and one has dual Lebanese-American citizenship.

I don’t remember a story like this one since John Walker Lindh, the US citizen who was taken captive by US forces in Afghanistan, and shipped to a US prison, Guantanamo. John Walker Lindh was one of the first prisoners taken from Afghanistan to Cuba, and one of the first cases of prisoner abuse to hit the news. One big difference here is that these are American citizens, where Lindt had given up his citizenship. Another difference is that Lindh had trained and was part of the Afghani forces fighting against the US forces. He was part of the Taliban army, wore a uniform and was bearing arms.

The closest parallel to their situation may be the two American citizens were captured opposing U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Two Taliban foot soldiers, John Walker Lindh and Yaser Esam Hamdi, held U.S. citizenship when they were captured in late 2001.

Lindh, a California native now in his early 20s, pleaded guilty in civilian court to supplying services to the Taliban government and carrying explosives for them. He received a 20-year prison sentence in 2002 and has since sought to have it reduced.

Hamdi was born in Louisiana and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He was held by the U.S. government for three years before being released to his family in Saudi Arabia in October 2004. He gave up his American citizenship as a condition of his release.Five Americans Held as Iraq Insurgents; MSNBC

These five Americans, rounded up in the last three months are being held on suspicion, and the case of at least one of them, Cyrus Kar, is, (to quote Jack Straw in the DSM), “pretty thin.”

Cyrus Kar is a film-maker from Los Angeles. Two months ago he arrived in Iraq to work on an historic film about Cyrus the Great of Persia. He was stopped almost immediately after his arrival in Iraq and searched. Five washing-machine timers were found in his car. After months of questioning and searches of his files and L.A. home, nothing was found and the FBI said he was clean. Yet, he is still held.

“We don’t understand why they won’t let him come home, especially since the government said he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Shahrzad Folger, Kar’s first cousin, said in a statement released yesterday.

The second thing this story brings to my mind is the House on Un-American Activities. That was the Red Scare during the 50’s. I remember some of this, and the fear was all pervasive. Many people left the United States to emmigrate to England where they could work and publish under another name.

The reason these fears hit me boom-boom-boom is because I had a conversation with my Italian editor last evening about the future of American Iraqi relations. Things do not look good at all. Even if the US withdrew all troops from Iraq, her view on reconciliation is that there will be none. And all this while I have been working for the right reason in the best way I know how, publishing everywhere and anywhere I could get printed, and these sources include: Electronic Iraq, Iraq News Network, AlJazeerah and Uruknet. If it were the fifties in the US I could be hauled up before the HUAC.

So when I saw this story in the Washington Post it gave me quite a fright. I think we should do all we can to support the ACLU in their efforts to gain the release of Cyrus Kar, and to make every effort to guarantee proper representation for the other four Americans held on suspicion of aiding and abetting the Iraq1 resistance/insurgency.

For more on this story see:

Five Americans Held in Iraq as InsurgentsGoogle News Search

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