AKA William

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A few weeks ago I wrote, very briefly, about a man named “Hussam,” an Iraqi man who, while at an HRC fundraiser in Washington D.C., accused American soldiers of executing Iraqi gays. He presented a number of graphic photos of the bodies of gay men allegedly killed by American soldiers. Something about the story smelled wrong, and I was a suspicious about the truthfulness of the story.

Michael Petrelis has been following the fallout of this story, which included an investigation by the U.S. Army, and yesterday he posted a letter detailing the Army’s findings:

The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command’s (USACIDC) Special Agents have looked into allegations that U.S. service members were involved in committing atrocities against gays in Iraq and have found no credible evidence that the allegations have merit.

In a sworn statement to Special Agents, the individual giving the presentation at the 24 July fundraiser said his words were taken out of context, he was misunderstood due to language barriers, and he was misquoted.

He stated that although he did show disturbing photographs at the event, the photographs of sectarian violence were in no way linked to U.S. service members.

Petrelis had himself tried to confirm the original allegations with “Hussam,” but was not able to. And he was unsurprised that the Army was unable to substantiate “Hussam’s” allegations:

Hussam is one slick operator, who, in emails and phone conversations with me, threw out every excuse he could think of to absolve himself of any real responsibility to prove his outlandish allegations.

With the military’s investigation over, I feel HRC must at this point issue an explicit apology to our US troops, and the LGBT community, for allowing their facilities to be used by Hussam as the platform from which he threw out his lies.

I’d say Petrelis is right.