By: E&P Staff The New York Times, in a posting on its Web site Tuesday, said it was reviewing its front-page article on Saturday which profiled the purported Iraqi under the black hood, attached with electrodes, in the most famous image from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
The online magazine Salon has charged that the Times got the wrong man.
The Times revealed that Chris Grey, chief spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, has sent the newspaper this e-mail message: "We have had several detainees claim they were the person depicted in the photograph in question. Our investigation indicates that the person you have is not the detainee who was depicted in the photograph released in connection with the Abu Ghraib investigation.
"As always, we will take this information into consideration in the course of our investigative duties to determine if there is any credibility to the person's allegations."
Salon recently received a large batch of new photos from Abu Ghraib and suspected the man in the Times' story was not the hooded figure. It said an official of the Criminal Investigation Command asserted that Ali Shalal Qaissi, the man identified by The Times, is not the detainee in the photograph.
The Times pointed out today the same man had also been featured in Vanity Fair and on PBS. But Susan Chira, foreign editor of The Times, said: "We take questions about our reporting very seriously, and we will carefully investigate Salon's findings. We attempted to verify the claims of Mr. Qaissi thoroughly. We spoke with representatives of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who had interviewed Mr. Qaissi and believed him to be the man in the photographs."
The Times account today continued:
"Amnesty International showed The Times evidence documenting that Mr. Qaissi was incarcerated at Abu Ghraib during the time the photographs were taken. The Times also spoke with his lawyers, who said they had the blanket that had draped him, as shown in the photograph. The Times contacted the military, which said the Geneva Conventions prevented it from commenting about the identity of anyone in a photograph. The Times did not contact the Criminal Investigation Command in the process of reporting the article.
"Mr. Qaissi, asked by The Times last night about the challenge to his identity, insisted that he was the man in the photograph. Salon says the hooded man identified in the Criminal Investigation Command documents is another prisoner. Asked about this, Mr. Qaissi said he knew that former prisoner and believed that he was also photographed in that position. Mr. Qaissi's lawyers made a similar assertion."
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