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An Iraqi photographer who was arrested in his Mahmudiya home by the US military on 1 September 2008 has been released. Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed was held for 17 months without charge at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad, despite a ruling by Iraq’s central criminal court on 30 November 2008 that he should be released. The US prison authorities claimed the journalist represented a security threat but refused to make specific allegations.
Photographer and documentary film-maker Umida Akhmedova has been charged with slandering and insulting the Uzkbek people. Under articles 139 and 140 of the criminal code the charges carry a maximum sentence of three years in jail. Akhmedova’s crime was to photograph men and women living in poverty in Uzbekistan, she also made a documentary about women’s rights.