MNF-I explains some of the evidence against AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who is facing a range of terror-related charges in Iraqi court.

The photographer, Bilal Hussein Zaidon, faces charges in the Iraqi Central Court based on the evidence, Pentagon officials said Monday.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell and other U.S. military officials would not say directly what charges he faced. They referred reporters to the Iraqi court system.

Hussein, an Iraqi who lives in the western Anbar province city of Ramadi, has been held without charge by the U.S. military since April 2006, when bomb parts and insurgent propaganda were found in his house after the U.S. military asked to use it as an observation post during an operation.

Hussein was already under suspicion by the U.S. military because he arrived at terrorist attack sites so quickly that they suspected he had advance knowledge of attacks, according to Morrell.

There was actually more than bomb parts and propaganda in Hussein’s house at the time of his arrest. According to Rusty Shackleford there was a senior al Qaeda bomber in the house with him, and Hussein wasn’t even the target of the raid in which he was picked up. The al Qaeda bomber, Hamid Hamad Motib, was the target and Hussein was picked up because he was there too. His work on behalf of the insurgents didn’t come to light until later. Characterizing the evidence against him as “bomb materials and propaganda” minimizes the circumstances of his arrest, to say the least. If you haven’t read Rusty’s post on this, you owe it to yourself to do so if for no other reason than to see that the “chickenhawk” smear is irrelevant in the wired world. Rusty helps nab one terrorist, Michelle breaks that story and blunts the AP’s dishonest PR campaign on Hussein’s behalf, Laura Mansfield translates jihadi videos, Robert Spencer explains what motivates terrorists, and all just about entirely out of view of the MSM.

Michelle has much more on this including some of Hussein’s photos that led to the suspicion that he was a terrorist operative while he was working for the AP.