I reproduce this Reuters update on the case of Iraqi AP photographer Bilal Hussein for anyone who may not have seen it earlier in the week.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi judge convened the first criminal hearing on Sunday against an Associated Press photographer who has been detained by the U.S. military without charges for nearly 20 months, the news agency said.

The U.S. military has accused Bilal Hussein, a 36-year-old Iraqi, of working with insurgents in Iraq. He was seized in April 2006 in Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province.

The award-winning photographer was present for most of the nearly seven-hour, closed-door proceeding in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, the AP said in a report from Baghdad.

It was the first time Hussein or his lawyers had seen any of the materials gathered by the U.S. military against him since his arrest, the news agency said.

Magistrate Dhia al-Kinani ordered that the proceedings and details of materials presented remain secret, the AP said.

Hussein’s lawyer, Paul Gardephe, said no formal charges were lodged. Gardephe was permitted to see some material during the proceeding but was forbidden from taking any copies with him to aid in building his defence, the AP said.

“There is still no formal charge against Bilal, and The Associated Press continues to believe that Bilal Hussein was a photojournalist working in a war zone and that claims that he is involved with insurgent activities are false,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement, according to the report.

“Because the judge ordered that the proceedings today be kept secret, we are restricted from saying anything further.”

The agency had said the U.S. military would submit evidence to the Iraqi judiciary on December 9. 

PULITZER PRIZE

The AP has repeatedly called for the immediate release of Hussein, who was part of its photo team that won a Pulitzer prize in 2005.

It has said that under Iraqi law, an investigative judge would review the evidence and decide whether to dismiss the case or send it to a three-member court for trial.

AP President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Curley has written to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, expressing concern that Hussein’s lawyer had not been given enough time and information to prepare his defence.

The U.S. military has said Hussein was detained for possessing material used to make roadside bombs, insurgent propaganda, and what it described as a surveillance photo of a coalition installation.

U.S. military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner said last month that Hussein’s case had been reviewed several times by a board that periodically reviews the files of detainees. Hussein was still deemed a “security threat”, he said.

Hussein is one of several Iraqi journalists who have been held by the U.S. military without being charged. Iraqi journalists working for Reuters have also been detained by the U.S. military for months and later released without charges.

(Writing by Dean Yates; editing by Ralph Boulton)
 

In the business those jump-for-joy sporting moments are referred to as ”jubo” (jubilation) or “cele” (celebration). ”Did you get the jubo/cele?” and the response, “yes, he was right up the barrel”, or “no he went the wrong way”,  is a common exchange between picture editor and the photographer on the touchline.

From the evidence on the wire there appear to be few sporting images more emotional or exuberant than those “jubo” moments of soccer players celebrating after scoring a goal. The expressions of American football and icehockey players are all too frequently obscured by facemasks. Basketball players seem to err on the side of mean and moody and baseball players appear to be almost permanently underwhelmed. It might be a cultural thing or perhaps just a result of the way those sports are broadcast or sponsored. There certainly isn’t a lack of passion because tempers do fray and fights and arguments are frequent, but there doesn’t seem to be any of the theatricality we see from soccer players, at least not during the game. 

Jose Sand of Lanus celebrates scoring against Boca Juniors - Enrique Marcarian

Frank Lampard of Chelsea celebrates scoring against Sunderland - Toby Melville

Cristiano Ronaldo of Manchester United celebrates scoring against Blackburn - Phil Noble

In the soccer playing nations, images like these from the Reuters wire, occupy prominent positions on sports sites, in specialist sports papers and sports sections of newspapers, often as cut-outs or montages and always used for maximum impact.

“Jubo” moments are the one part of the game when the players direct their attention at us, when they seek the approbation or otherwise of the viewers and spectator. They not only help to sell newspapers, but they also sell the sport itself and even if you aren’t interested it is almost impossible to remain impervious to such expressions of raw exuberance.

The devil is, of course, in the details. Sadly for Phil Noble this isn’t the WBC welterweight world title fight, it is a Commonwealth light heavyweight bout. It isn’t Floyd Mayweather of the U.S. it is Michael Gbenga of Ghana. He isn’t hitting Ricky Hatton of Britain, he is hitting Dean Francis and it isn’t Las Vegas, Nevada it’s Bolton, northern England. He didn’t win and it wasn’t even the top bout of the night.  

Apart from that it is an absolute gem of a boxing picture, right on the money, beautifully lit and with a lovely clean background. 

Right picture, right night, wrong fight!

Participating in downhill winter sports certainly calls for nerve and experience and so does photographing them competitively. These images from Wolfgang Rattay, a veteran of the slippery slope, freeze the action at the Men’s Luge World Cup event in Winterberg, Germany and even permit close examination of the expressions on the faces of the competitors. It is hard to escape the conclusion, at least from this evidence, that having his eyes open was perhaps what gave the winner his edge.  

If individual luge looks scary, Wolfgang make luge with two-up look positively relaxed, although it really can’t be much fun for the occupant of the back seat.  

Frankly I’m not sure which is braver, hurtling down a mountain feet first at high speed or having the confidence to wear lycra in freezing conditions in the certain knowledge of the inevitability of being photographed from this angle. 

I really like this picture of a young Russian sailor voting in the parliamentary elections. It was a routine assignment, an oblique regional angle on the main story centred on Moscow, from which Gleb Garanich has delivered a little gem which is anything but routine. The subject is readily identifiable as a Russian sailor even through the red fabric of the polling booth and it it looks more like something from the depths of an archive than a spot news picture.  

I would have been tempted to crop it tighter to clean it up a tad but I can see he’d want to give it as much space as possible and the original version does look busier, more ‘newsy’ somehow. The cropped version looks more like a painting.

Which is exactly why it looked so familiar the first time I saw it - it reminds me of Vermeer’s painting The Lacemaker - admittedly it’s a guy, landscape and red but the position of the subject and the overall texture rang a bell. 

Is Gleb’s picture art? No, for me it is news photography but perhaps it reveals the range and sophistication of the visual terms of reference photographers like him call on. It does however demonstrate that even in the crash, bang, wallop world of news agency photography there is space for stillness and beauty. 

What do you think - crop or not crop? Art or not art? News picture or just Mr October in next year’s calendar?

I could almost hear the sigh of relief from the others when the World Rally Championship in Wales was assigned to me.  The remote locations, the wind, the rain and the mud have given it a reputation as ”challenging”. Now after experiencing it for myself and standing in all the above for extended periods, I can confirm that this reputation is richly deserved.

On Day One I took a long walk to a spot recommended to me by one of the co-drivers where the cars hit a jump in top gear at over 100mph. Even through the viewfinder of a camera it was an incredible sight to behold see cars flying for 20 or 30 metres.  

 
Bizarrely, rally stewards who under normally circumstances love nothing more than ordering people about and getting in your way, appeared oblivious to the the cluster of photographers and TV crew just a few metres away from where the cars were landing.  

On Day Two I  chose a location which promised to give me clean action shots as drivers took a steeply sloping bend. Unfortunately for Norway’s Andreas Mikkelsen the bend was trickier than he thought. He hit a boulder which flipped the car over and sent it tumbling down the slope.

This time however I was shooting on a long lens at a very safe distance so even when the car was absolutely filling my frame my only thought was for the brand new camera I was using as a remote directly in line with where the car was heading. Photographers closer to the action had to make a split second decision to either keep on shooting or make a run for it, but the car rolled one last time onto its three remaining wheels and stopped. Happily the driver, co-driver, photographers and my remote camera all emerged unscathed.  

One man’s misfortune is another man’s luck, but as much as I’d like to take the credit for being in the right place at the right time, those drivers must each take a thousand corners every day and my being there was pure concidence.   

Here, on a straight stretch of road without bolders or spectators is a man who stayed dry and upright all the way through Wales,  World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb of France. 

My last visit to Iraq was six months ago and as I returned to Baghdad on Saturday for a month-long embed, I wondered if anything had really changed. Sometimes it’s the little things you notice first.  Like the new luggage trolleys in the airport arrivals area, or the long queue of taxis outside waiting for customers, where before there had only been a dusty bus to the main checkpoint. Or the way the security contractors getting off my flight, instead of flashing their DOD badges and strolling past immigration officials like before, now step into a special line next to the visa office and produce sheafs of documents for a thorough pre-entry governmental screening.

Route Irish, the infamously dangerous highway leading from the airport to central Baghdad, was at one time marked by almost daily suicide car bombings.  Today the ride is quiet, the highway almost deserted. Instead of the circuitous route once required by road closures and checkpoint bottlenecks, we now take a more direct path and arrive quickly to Abu Nawas, a broad avenue on the banks of the Tigris River which has been recently been reopened by the government.

The riverfront was once famous for its restaurants serving grilled fish,  which disappeared after the war and the area had become an inhospitable dustbowl, deserted save for few mongrel dogs and the occasional army patrol. But as we drive down the boulevard today I see a few restaurants have returned and children are playing in a freshly scrubbed park.

We arrive at the office and I’m greeted by colleagues and old friends. Through good times and bad times, their wonderful Iraqi hospitality has never wavered. As I talk to the staff, I ask if maybe things are getting better, that maybe the worse is over.  To a person the answer is the same, “Inshallah” - God willing.