Cited as Symbol of Abu Ghraib, Man Admits He Is Not in Photo

Cited as Symbol of Abu Ghraib, Man Admits He Is Not in Photo

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: March 18, 2006
In the summer of 2004, a group of former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison filed a lawsuit claiming that they had been the victims of the abuse captured in photographs that incited outrage around the world.

U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command
In a photo taken in Abu Ghraib prison on Nov. 4, 2003, Ali Shalal Qaissi displays the deformed hand that gave him the nickname "The Claw."

(March 18, 2006)
Editors' Note (March 17, 2006) One, Ali Shalal Qaissi, soon emerged as their chief representative, appearing in publications and on television in several countries to detail his suffering. His prominence made sense, because he claimed to be the man in the photograph that had become the international icon of the Abu Ghraib scandal: standing on a cardboard box, hooded, with wires attached to his outstretched arms. He had even emblazoned the silhouette of that image on business cards.

The trouble was, the man in the photograph was not Mr. Qaissi. [Editors' Note, Page A2.]

Military investigators had identified the man on the box as a different detainee who had described the episode in a sworn statement immediately after the photographs were discovered in January 2004, but then the man seemed to go silent.

Mr. Qaissi had energetically filled the void, traveling abroad with slide shows to argue that abuse in Iraq continued, as head of a group he called the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/rj6gk NY Times

Ah yes in my guise as 'Wise Basti' I seem to remember reminding y'all about fake photos and tapes in regards to old bin Laden. You see cats have an inborn knowledge of this sort of chicanery.

And this from the NY Times no less, the bastion of everything correct and aboveboard!