Update 1/5/06: The Iraqi government has now identified Jamil Hussein as an employee of the Iraqi Police, and he is facing arrest for speaking to media for the Hurriyah story. Questions remain about AP's reporting on the incident, and many others attributed to Jamil Hussein. Forty of the 61 stories attributed to him have no corroboration in other major media.

Who is Capt. Jamil Hussein?

Should you bother taking the time to try to figure it out? You’ll be glad you did. Stick with me.

Last Friday, the AP broke a story about six Sunnis being doused with kerosene and burned alive by Shiites as they were leaving a mosque in the Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah. It was a brutal, horrific act, symbolic of the serious sectarian violence wracking Iraq and the U.S. forces charged with securing the country. As such, the story of the six burned Sunnis flew around the globe, splashed on front pages and pasted into Iraq analyses. Right now, it’s clocking almost 700 hits on Google News. Everyone who reads or watches news has heard about it.

Sadly, many fewer people have heard about the questions surrounding it. The man to whom the AP originally attributed the story—one Capt. Jamil Hussein, allegedly of the Iraqi Police—is neither an Iraqi policeman nor an authorized spokesperson for the force.

This, from a CENTCOM press conference Thursday:

For example, we have some of the respected news outlets that deal with news fast and have a relation with many TV channels and the media in general, who distributed a story quoting a person called Jamil Hussein. Afterward, we searched our sources in our staff for anyone by this name-- maybe he wore an MOI [Ministry of Information] uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money. And the second name used is Lt. Maythem.

Oops.

Jamil Hussein was the sole source for this story for most of the day on Friday. AP writer Qais Al-Bashir found him 30 minutes after he filed his original story, in which “police officials in the region told Associated Press reporters that nothing had happened in the Hurriyah district.” As soon as Hussein entered the picture, so did six burned Sunnis and several burned mosques. (Read through a timeline of the story’s construction, here.)

Hussein was the only source for the story until Friday evening, when the AP added corroboration from Hurriyah Sunni elder Imad al-Hashimi. The next day, the AP claimed to “stand by its story,” but published another version of the story, this one with far more detail and several new witnesses, all unnamed.

Thursday, the AP continued to stand by its story without addressing CENTCOM’s claims about Jamil Hussein.

We are satisfied with our reporting on this incident. If Iraqi and U.S. military spokesmen choose to disregard AP’s on-the-ground reporting, that is certainly their choice to make, but it is a puzzling one given the facts.

AP journalists have repeatedly been to the Hurriyah neighborhood, a small Sunni enclave within a larger Shiia area of Baghdad . Residents there have told us in detail about the attack on the mosque and that six people were burned alive during it. Images taken later that day and again this week show a burned mosque and graffiti that says “blood wanted,” similar to that found on the homes of Iraqis driven out of neighborhoods where they are a minority. We have also spoken repeatedly to a police captain who is known to AP and has been a reliable source of accurate information in the past and he has confirmed the attack.

So, what does it all matter? It’s one source, disputed by the government. It’s one story among thousands of Sunni/Shiite infighting. It’s one more tale of enmity.

Is it just one, though? Or has it been months of stories attributed to Jamil Hussein, which may or may not be entirely true? Has it been just the one questionable incident reported? Or, was it also one mosque torched in April of this year, not four mosques? Was it also grown men killed in a tank attack in Ramadi instead of women and children killed in an airstrike? Is it just Hussein, or are there dozens of suspicious sources on CENTCOM’s “who-the-hell-is-he?” list?

But heck, you say, bad stuff happens all the time in Iraq, right? This “burned alive” story could have happened, too.

Yes, it could have happened, and may have. There is violence and brutality in Iraq. But because it could have happened does not lessen the AP’s obligation to report it responsibly. In fact, if anything, it increases AP’s obligation to be transparent. Continued...