IJ Reilly
Jul 11, 2005, 11:54 AM
An L.A. man tells of 54 frustrating days in custody in Iraq but still plans to finish his film.
BAGHDAD — The wiry Los Angeles aspiring filmmaker was an unlikely prisoner inside a cell block that included Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy, and other high-level officials of the former regime.
But after 54 days of detention, Cyrus Kar, a 44-year-old Iranian American working on a documentary film about the 5th Century BC Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, was released Sunday and headed to the relative safety of a Baghdad hotel outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone.
Kar, speaking to reporters, described long, frustrating days in solitary confinement with little information about his status or reason for being held. At the same time, Kar said he was well-treated while he was held and understood security concerns in war-torn Iraq.
"I don't hold anything against them for holding us," he said. "What I hold against them is they put us in a cell and forgot us."
He and his cameraman, Farshid Faraji, a freelance journalist for Iranian television and a resident of Tehran, were detained after they were found riding in a taxicab that unbeknownst to them, they said, contained 35 to 37 timers for washing machines, which can be used by insurgents to make bombs.
Kar was held in Camp Cropper, the detention facility housing Saddam Hussein and other regime stalwarts. Faraji, 34, was held in a section of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison that included suspected foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Sudan and Egypt. On Sunday, Kar and Faraji lumbered their equipment and their remaining possessions up to their small room and chatted about their ordeal, recalling their frustration with the American authorities who held them.
"They knew from the get-go that we were nothing more than filmmakers," said Kar, who served in the Navy. "They saw my VA card in my wallet."
Kar called the circumstances of their May 17 arrest in the city of Balad "quite bizarre." He and Faraji had hired a taxi driver about an hour before the arrest. As the cab was waved through a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers, the driver pulled over and told authorities he had two Iranian filmmakers in his cab.
Iraqis sometimes suspect Iranian pilgrims and businesspeople of being spies for the religious regime in Tehran.
The soldiers searched the car and in the trunk found the three dozen washing machine timers. The driver admitted the timers were his, but the soldiers arrested all three men, handing them over to Americans.
...
Kar said he repeatedly asked to see someone from the embassy but no one came until Saturday.
He said he also asked for an attorney but never saw one.
Kar said he passed a lie detector test in which he was asked whether they belonged to the insurgency. His eight weeks of confinement were dull. He was not allowed to speak to any of the detainees that were housed with him, he said. He spent his days reading through the Geneva Convention, which he can now practically recite.
...
The authorities threw away the pair's clothes but bought them new ones after their release. Kar said a $500 graduation ring from Pepperdine University was taken from him at the time of his arrest but was not returned. About $600 in cash, a cell phone and a digital camera with pictures from his trip disappeared from their hotel room while they were in custody, and Kar said the FBI damaged his U.S. passport while examining whether it was authentic.
Rosenbaum and Kar's family said that during the government's investigation, U.S. authorities destroyed about 20 hours of footage for his film, as well as a laptop that had nothing on it but information related to Kar's documentary.
Rosenbaum said he and two other ACLU attorneys on the case, Ahilan Arulanantham and Ranjana Natarajan, spent hours on the phone Sunday with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad trying to expedite Kar's return.
With his passport unusable, they were told, Kar would not receive another one for at least a week.
Kar's family and the ACLU attorneys decried the military's actions, with Rosenbaum calling the government statement "a disgrace."
But military officials said Sunday that the matter had been handled and resolved appropriately.
"This case highlights the effectiveness of our detainee review process," Brig. Gen. Don Alston was quoted as saying in the statement. "We followed well-established procedures, and Mr. Kar has now been properly released."
...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kar11jul11,0,5400286.story
BAGHDAD — The wiry Los Angeles aspiring filmmaker was an unlikely prisoner inside a cell block that included Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy, and other high-level officials of the former regime.
But after 54 days of detention, Cyrus Kar, a 44-year-old Iranian American working on a documentary film about the 5th Century BC Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, was released Sunday and headed to the relative safety of a Baghdad hotel outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone.
Kar, speaking to reporters, described long, frustrating days in solitary confinement with little information about his status or reason for being held. At the same time, Kar said he was well-treated while he was held and understood security concerns in war-torn Iraq.
"I don't hold anything against them for holding us," he said. "What I hold against them is they put us in a cell and forgot us."
He and his cameraman, Farshid Faraji, a freelance journalist for Iranian television and a resident of Tehran, were detained after they were found riding in a taxicab that unbeknownst to them, they said, contained 35 to 37 timers for washing machines, which can be used by insurgents to make bombs.
Kar was held in Camp Cropper, the detention facility housing Saddam Hussein and other regime stalwarts. Faraji, 34, was held in a section of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison that included suspected foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Sudan and Egypt. On Sunday, Kar and Faraji lumbered their equipment and their remaining possessions up to their small room and chatted about their ordeal, recalling their frustration with the American authorities who held them.
"They knew from the get-go that we were nothing more than filmmakers," said Kar, who served in the Navy. "They saw my VA card in my wallet."
Kar called the circumstances of their May 17 arrest in the city of Balad "quite bizarre." He and Faraji had hired a taxi driver about an hour before the arrest. As the cab was waved through a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers, the driver pulled over and told authorities he had two Iranian filmmakers in his cab.
Iraqis sometimes suspect Iranian pilgrims and businesspeople of being spies for the religious regime in Tehran.
The soldiers searched the car and in the trunk found the three dozen washing machine timers. The driver admitted the timers were his, but the soldiers arrested all three men, handing them over to Americans.
...
Kar said he repeatedly asked to see someone from the embassy but no one came until Saturday.
He said he also asked for an attorney but never saw one.
Kar said he passed a lie detector test in which he was asked whether they belonged to the insurgency. His eight weeks of confinement were dull. He was not allowed to speak to any of the detainees that were housed with him, he said. He spent his days reading through the Geneva Convention, which he can now practically recite.
...
The authorities threw away the pair's clothes but bought them new ones after their release. Kar said a $500 graduation ring from Pepperdine University was taken from him at the time of his arrest but was not returned. About $600 in cash, a cell phone and a digital camera with pictures from his trip disappeared from their hotel room while they were in custody, and Kar said the FBI damaged his U.S. passport while examining whether it was authentic.
Rosenbaum and Kar's family said that during the government's investigation, U.S. authorities destroyed about 20 hours of footage for his film, as well as a laptop that had nothing on it but information related to Kar's documentary.
Rosenbaum said he and two other ACLU attorneys on the case, Ahilan Arulanantham and Ranjana Natarajan, spent hours on the phone Sunday with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad trying to expedite Kar's return.
With his passport unusable, they were told, Kar would not receive another one for at least a week.
Kar's family and the ACLU attorneys decried the military's actions, with Rosenbaum calling the government statement "a disgrace."
But military officials said Sunday that the matter had been handled and resolved appropriately.
"This case highlights the effectiveness of our detainee review process," Brig. Gen. Don Alston was quoted as saying in the statement. "We followed well-established procedures, and Mr. Kar has now been properly released."
...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kar11jul11,0,5400286.story
