|
|
 |
Home | Spenta Productions
|
 |
Spenta Productions - Articles & Media
ABC | NightLine | Part One | 55 Days
ABC's Nightline featured Iranian-born American Cyrus Kar. He was shooting a documentarty in Iraq about Cyrus the Great when he was detained by the U.S. military on suspicion of terrorism and kept for 55 days at the same U.S.
| ABC | NightLine-Part 1 | 55 Days | Cyrus Kar | In Search of Cyrus The Great |
|
This text will be replaced
|
SKIP TO PART 2
Newsweek | World News | Not an Enemy Combatant
By Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek
July 12 - It wasn't part of the script. Cyrus Kar came to Iraq with plans to film a sweeping historical documentary. Instead, he ended up at the high-security detention facility in Baghdad where Saddam Hussein is held.
After nearly two months in a 5-by-7-foot cell, only a few doors down from notorious former regime members like Tariq Aziz, Kar was released on Sunday. "I still feel like it's a dream," he said, a few hours after he was freed. "I can't believe I'm out."
BBC NEWS | Middle East | The strange case of Cyrus Kar
By Robert Greenall
BBC News
Confirmation by the Pentagon that five US citizens have been detained in Iraq on suspicion of links to insurgents has drawn attention to the highly controversial case of Iranian-born filmmaker Cyrus Kar, said to be one of the detainees.
Mr Kar's relatives say his constitutional rights have been trampled on, and that he is being kept in detention without trial despite the fact that the FBI has, they say, already cleared him of any suspicion.
Read more
ABC News: Filmmaker Cyrus Kar Describes Ordeal of Iraq Detention
News
Aug. 24, 2005 - For Cyrus Kar, a trip this spring to the Middle East for work on a documentary quickly turned into a nightmare that he says involved inhumane treatment at the hands of U.S. officials.
Some might have questioned his decision to visit war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. But Kar, an Iranian-American documentary filmmaker and U.S. citizen, says it was part of a labor of love: to complete his documentary about the ancient Persian King Cyrus the Great.
Read more
Media Matters - O'Reilly wrongly accused Cyrus Kar of possessing bomb timer
Fox News
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly wrongly attacked American Cyrus Kar, an aspiring filmmaker detained for seven weeks and later released by the U.S. military in Iraq for suspected links to the Iraqi insurgency. O'Reilly falsely claimed that Kar possessed bomb components when he was captured by Iraqi police. In fact, the Pentagon determined that the components -- washing-machine timers typically used by Iraqi insurgents to detonate bombs -- did not belong to Kar, but instead belonged to the driver of the cab he had hired. Kar was eventually cleared of any connection with terrorists.
Read more
ACLU - American Detained in Iraq Released Following ACLU Action
Los Angeles Filmmaker to Return Home After Being Held Virtually Incommunicado by U.S. Military for Seven Weeks
LOS ANGELES -- Following a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Los Angeles documentary filmmaker and Navy veteran Cyrus Kar and his cameraman were released today after more than 50 days held by U.S. military forces in an Iraqi detention center.
In a phone call today to his family and ACLU lawyers from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Kar said he was kept in solitary confinement with just one hour outside his cell each day and that he repeatedly asked for access to a lawyer, but was denied.
Read more
The New York Times - National - How a Trip to Film in Iraq Ended in a Military Jail Cell
By TIM GOLDEN
Published: July 24, 2005
LOS ANGELES, July 22 - After his first four days in solitary confinement at an American military prison in Iraq, Cyrus Kar was taken from his small cell and brought before two F.B.I. agents, who before questioning him gave him a sheet of paper listing his rights.
"I have the right to a lawyer?" Mr. Kar, an aspiring filmmaker from Los Angeles, said he asked as he scanned the list.
"Yes," he said he was told by one of the agents, whom he knew only as Robert.
"Do you actually have lawyers here?" Mr. Kar inquired.
"No," he quoted the agent as explaining. "The last guy who requested one is still waiting two years later, in Afghanistan."
Read more
Payvand - He is Awake: Close Up on Cyrus Kar
By: Darius KADIVAR
Published: Janury 29, 2007
LOS ANGELES, Janury 29 - "O Cyrus [Koroush], great King, King of Kings, Achaemenian King, King of the land of Iran. I, the Shahanshah of Iran, offer thee salutations from myself and from my nation. Rest in peace, for we are awake, and we will always stay awake." – Shah of Iran's historical speech at Pasargadae October 12th, 1971.
It's a fascinating story : That of a quest of an Iranian-American in search of his roots. Or is it a quest that every Iranian expat has somewhat undertook if not physically at least subconsciously in the past 27 years for anyone who has left Iran due to War, Revolution, or Terror that followed the Islamic Revolution of 1979? In the aftermath of September 11Th, Iran was labeled by US President George W. Bush as part of an Axis of Evil paradoxically in an equally religious terminology that has often been used by Islamic Fundamentalists over the years to qualify the US or Israel.
A strange rhetoric unexpected to be used by the President of the most powerful nation in the world and oldest Democracy. A paradoxical designation also for a country like Iran whose ancient roots dig deep in the history of Humanity as a Cradle of Civilization and whose founder, Cyrus the Great, was to establish the very first Declaration of Human Rights nearly 2500 years ago. An act also recorded in the Bible and Torah for which a fragile mud-baked brick cylinder, today in display at the British Museum ( and also a replica of which stands in the United Nation's Building in NY) also is said to have inspired the drafting of American Constitution as we know it today. This is where this story of a personal quest gets into the big picture of international politics:
Read more
|
|
