Yassin El-Ayouty and Bilal Hussein

Yassin El-Ayouty ’53, PhD recently joined with other lawyers in the defense of Bilal Hussein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Iraqi photographer for the Associated Press who was detained for nearly two years by the U.S. military under suspicion of aiding insurgents. El-Ayouty and Paul Gardephe, who was then an attorney with Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler and is now a federal judge in Manhattan, met with Hussein in 2007 at Camp Cropper in Baghdad. They secured Hussein’s release last year. El-Ayouty described his Iraqi client as an uncomplicated man caught up in complex circumstances.

“Bilal was selling vegetables for his parents in Falluja and his uncle gave him an old camera. The Associated Press was looking for someone to take photos that showed the impact of U.S. bombing on civilians. This guy was not a rebel—he was a photojournalist, in a limited way,” he said.

“This case was about freedom of expression,” he added, noting, “It is a pity to abandon basic principles such as civil rights and liberties because it helps the terrorists. It enables them to do more recruiting.”

Read more about El-Ayouty here.