The trial of Bilal Hussein
Update: Jim Hanson at PJM reports on how Hussesin first came under military scrutiny
in 2004.
Pajamas Media has seen an email from a military source involved with the operation, confirming that Bilal Hussein and several others in the Fallujah area during 2004 had come to the attention of US forces tasked with information operations.
They noted ongoing reports coming out of Fallujah that did not match the reality they were aware of. Stories of children and civilians being killed would come out, but in areas where the Marines had not conducted operations. Many of these stories featured pictures and reporting from Hussein and quotes from the same two doctors at Fallujah Hospital. During this period of time Fallujah was controlled almost completely by al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents. Anyone doing anything was subject to their approval.
Bilal Hussein had free reign to be anywhere and was often taking pictures in the company of insurgents and terrorists. He and the other stringers who made up AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo team managed to capture assassinations as they happened. They were on site at bombings within seconds to capture the carnage almost as it happened.
This access and the number of false reports of civilian deaths led the information operations staff to take note. They began monitoring Hussein more closely for two reasons: one they were tasked with countering or debunking false claims of civilian casualties and atrocities, second because Hussein’s very tight relations with the insurgents could be used against the Marines themselves.
This team was comprised of US Public Affairs and Intelligence personnel as well as a Special Ops unit to exploit any actionable intelligence gathered. It was an extraordinary measure and only the fact that Hussein and several others were acting as de facto terror press agents prompted it.
***
It’s Sunday morning in Iraq. Today is the day our military officials plan to submit evidence against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein to the Iraqi judiciary system. You’ll recall that the military stated last month that it “possesses convincing and irrefutable evidence that Bilal Hussein is a threat to security and stability as a link to insurgent activity.”
Look for the Associated Press to launch again into full-court Advocacy Press mode–exercising its global reach to disseminate public relations spin packaged as objective news coverage. What you will not read in the AP’s coverage of itself (or in the coverage by its supporters) is any honest, in-depth acknowledgment of the enormous perils of Western media outlets relying on dubious foreign stringers. The AP maintains that the “real reason for Mr. Hussein’s detention and incarceration for 19 months without charges is that he produced images of conflict in Anbar Province which the military did not want the citizens of Iraq and the United States to see.”
In the AP’s eyes, no stringer can do wrong. Only the American military participates in conspiracies to kill and cover up. And anyone who allows for the possibility that a journalist might possibly be in cahoots with our enemies is an “obsessive” enemy of the free press.
But contrary to the AP’s paranoid attacks on its critics, the stringer problem is not merely a concern of military officials and right-wing bloggers. Neil Munro’s April 2006 National Journal investigation exposed case after case of suspected staged, faked, or questionable war photos. One of the photographers Munro zeroed in on was Bilal Hussein–and note, this was published before news of his detention broke. It’s worth revisiting Munro’s reporting last year as the proceedings open today:
Journalists and photo editors face still another challenge when accounts of a single incident differ dramatically, making it hard to place photographs in their proper context. This problem is especially acute in Iraq. The U.S. military will give one version of events; local Iraqis will give another, very different story. Sometimes, residents — even doctors and hospital officials — sympathize with, or fear, the insurgents, and they simply lie or exaggerate to make Iraqi forces or U.S. troops look bad. Other times, local eyewitnesses give an account of an incident that is more accurate than the official government or military story.
The problem sharpens when no Western reporter is on the scene, but a photographer, usually an Iraqi stringer, is. Photo editors, or even local Western bureau chiefs, have trouble judging the veracity of the images that come from such an event. Last October, for example, The Washington Post printed a striking image of four caskets, purportedly containing dead women and children, and a line of mourning men on a flat desert plain outside the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The photo, provided by the Associated Press, accompanied an article that began this way:
“A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25 people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.
“In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni Arab region with a heavy insurgent presence.
“The U.S. military said it killed a total of 70 insurgents in Sunday’s airstrikes and, in a statement, said it knew of no civilian deaths.”
The story, datelined Baghdad, pointed to the sharply divergent accounts of the incident, and it quoted both Ramadi residents and hospital officials as saying that many civilians had been killed. The photograph, shot by an Iraqi stringer for AP, presumably was a scene of a funeral for some of the dead civilians.
In December, The Post did a follow-up story about the differences in accounts of civilian casualties in Anbar province during the U.S. Marine offensive there. Ellen Knickmeyer, The Post’s Baghdad bureau chief, who wrote both the October and December stories, went back to the Marine Corps, whose officials insisted that the October air raid had not killed civilians but had in fact destroyed a cell of insurgents responsible for setting off roadside bombs.
The December story included this passage: “Analysis of video footage shot by the plane showed only what appeared to be grown men where the bomb struck, [Marine Col. Michael] Denning said. After the airstrike, he said, roadside bombs in the area ’shut down to almost nothing. That was a good strike, and we got some people who were killing a lot of people,’ Denning said.”
Knickmeyer declined to respond to an e-mail seeking comments.
Munro had a hard time getting lots of folks to comment.
These articles clearly present the two, largely incompatible, versions of the air-raid story. If AP’s picture is true and accurately shows a funeral for women and children killed in the October air raid, then U.S. officials are pushing a false story. But if the U.S. military’s story is true, then AP and The Post may have published a staged, or at least misleading, photo. Maybe it wasn’t a real funeral. Or maybe insurgents had killed the victims.
“Were we sold a bill of goods?” asked Elbert, The Post’s managing editor for photography. “We may have been. I don’t know.”
Defense Department officials, contacted by National Journal, declined to declassify the video taken by the raiding airplane. “We looked at the video and we felt it was in the best interests to be classified,” Navy Cmdr. Terry L. Shannon, who reviews classified videos for possible release, said on March 22. But declassification wouldn’t make much difference, said another Defense official, because the video is of such poor quality that “it does not show what the Marines say they found.”
The funeral photograph was taken by Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer working for the Associated Press. AP officials declined to make Hussein available for an interview, and National Journal was unable to contact him directly in Iraq…
…A series of Hussein’s photographs illustrate another dilemma for photo editors — whether to publish images that may have been created for the photographer. Last September 17, in Ramadi, Hussein took pictures after a battle at a dusty intersection. At least one U.S. armored vehicle had been damaged and towed away, leaving behind its 40-foot dull-gray metal track tread. Hussein’s photographs showed the locals piling debris and auto tires onto the tread, and then celebrating as they lit a fire. Without the fire, smoke, and added debris, the photo would have presented a pretty uninteresting image of people looking at a leftover tank tread. With the smoke, fire, and debris, the image seemed to convey that a major battle had just taken place.
Weeks later, USA Today published a similar Hussein photograph from a different incident in Ramadi, which featured celebrating Sunnis, burning car tires, and a tank tread pulled over on its side.
Lyon said that AP bars photographers from asking people to change a scene, but that a crowd’s spontaneous decision to change a scene in front of a cameraman presents a different situation. “You have this [dilemma] every day all around the world,” he said. “There’s nothing new there.”
LTC Robert Bateman, a military author/journalist who has a long history and knowledge of AP’s past journalistic malpractice and continuing paranoia, recently challenged AP head Tom Curley’s unhinged claims and raised questions about the news organization’s legal counsel/spin doctor:
Standing at the head of the AP today is Tom Curley. In 2006, several months after Hussein’s arrest, Curley’s frustration spilled over in an editorial in which he wrote of Hussein, “He is no longer free to circulate in his native Fallujah or in Ramadi, taking photographs that coalition commanders would prefer not to see published…” and, “Both official and unofficial parties on every side of a conflict try to discredit or silence news they don’t like. That is certainly the case in Iraq, where journalists are routinely harassed, defamed, beaten and kidnapped. At last count, 80 had been killed.”
Now, since the rest of that Washington Post column was all about how Hussein had been arrested by the U.S. military in Iraq, the only connection a reader can logically make (although it is not explicitly stated) is that it is the U.S. military that has “routinely” been beating and kidnapping, journalists and by implication as well, deliberately killed 80 reporters or others involved in journalism. That, folks, is not true.
The U.S. military has not defamed, beaten, kidnapped or killed any journalists. At least, it has not intentionally killed any because they were journalists. (Several Western journalists have, in fact, died as a result of U.S. weapons fire, but not because they were journalists. The same applies for non-Western journalists. All tolled, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, some 124 journalists have died in Iraq, 16 of whom were killed by U.S.-fired weapons or in cross-fire between coalition forces and insurgents. See it all here.)
I thought I should mention that point since nobody in the U.S. government responded to Curley’s comments at that time, at least so far as I could determine.
Curley ended his essay this way: “If Bilal has done something wrong, the Iraqi courts stand ready to try him. Iraqi authorities have asked more than once that he and other Iraqi citizens in prolonged U.S. military custody be turned over to them for due process. We ask the same.”
In mid-November of this year, the U.S. government announced that it planned to do just that. Hussein is to be turned over to the Iraqi legal system. Curley, meanwhile, appears to have changed his mind. The Iraqi justice system, in his eyes, is no longer sufficient. But instead of working with the Iraqi government and judicial system, the AP has hired a former prosecutor named Paul Gardephe to represent Hussein. Now here is the curious part. Gardephe apparently does not speak Arabic. He does not read or write Arabic. He has never represented a client before an Iraqi court, or before any Arabic court. He has no legal training in the Iraqi judicial process, and it will doubtless require a waiver for him to practice law in Iraq before Iraqi judges. But what he does have is this (from Mr. Gardephe’s bio on his New York City law firm’s Web site):
“Paul Gardephe chairs the firm’s Litigation Department, White Collar Defense and Investigations group and is co-Chair of the firm’s Subprime Mortgage Practice Team. His practice includes the defense of white collar criminal prosecutions and grand jury investigations, internal corporate investigations, and related regulatory proceedings. He also co-chairs the firm’s Appellate Practice group and has extensive appellate practice credentials. He often represents the media, particularly in libel and related matters.”
Say what? Are they serious? Bilal Hussein is facing an Iraqi investigative judge, and the AP hires an American lawyer? (The Iraqi system uses a two-tier judge system. The first tier consists of “investigative judges,” which the Iraqi system uses in much the same way that we use grand juries … which is just the tip of the iceberg as far as differences between the two systems go and also partially explains why the specific charges have not been enunciated. Anybody with 30 minutes experience with the Iraqi legal system knows this.)
The AP’s man faces charges with real, serious, consequences, and the AP hires an attorney whose primary qualification seems to be public relations spin for white-collar crimes? On what planet does that make sense? What was Curley thinking when he hired a NYC firm, and a lawyer with no Arabic language skills, no experience in military issues (let alone war zones) or the laws of land warfare, and no legal training in the country in which their employee faces trial? The only thing that occurs to me is that Curley somehow believes that American public opinion is what really counts in the Iraqi justice system. In short, Curley’s behavior (and that of the AP) suggests that his assumption is that it is domestic U.S. public relations that really matter in Iraqi courtrooms.
Two more items to bear in mind as the trial of Bilal Hussein kicks off:
1) Refresh your memories of the case of Pham Xuan An.
2) Re-read my response to one of the AP’s first public relations salvos last year. An excerpt that remains relevant today:
More telling than what the AP chooses to respond to is what it remained stunningly silent on in its statement about my column and blog posts supposedly filled with “numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”
What does the AP have to say about its five-month blackout on the news of Hussein’s detention, first reported on this blog and covered extensively in what it derisively calls the “so-called blogosphere?”
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about the questions raised by National Journal’s Neil Munro over a dubious Hussein photo taken in October 2005 of a purported funeral image outside Ramadi disputed by the US military?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about questions raised by milblogger Bill Roggio concerning another suspicious AP/Hussein-photographed scene in Ramadi of a favorite staging ground for terrorists?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about blogger Cori Dauber’s scathing critique of old AP television footage used to spread bogus reports of a fake “uprising” in Ramadi in December 2005?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about blogger Clarice Feldman’s post at the American Thinker on an Iraqi intelligence document that bragged about “one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency?”
Nothing.
Instead, most of AP’s 444-word response reads like an Amnesty International press release arguing for the “charge or release” law enforcement approach to Hussein and 14,000 other security detainees deemed high-risk threats to our coalition forces in Iraq:
“Malkin would deny Bilal due process and the rule of law by trying him in her column and assuming his guilt by mere association…There you can learn why AP has been asking the U.S. military to either charge or release Bilal…AP is insisting that the U.S. military follow accepted due process under the law and the Geneva Conventions – that is, give Bilal Hussein the chance to see any evidence and answer formal charges; if the evidence is not there, release him.”
With its non-response response to my column, the AP has made its priorities crystal clear. AP stands for Advocacy Press. Its reporting on military detentions and interrogations of enemy combatants and security detainees–and its coverage of the accompanying legislative and legal debates–cannot be trusted as fair and impartial as it lobbies aggressively for the military to subjugate its security concerns and intelligence-gathering mission in favor of what AP exec Tom Curley calls “justice.”
You can count on AP, the “essential global network,” to support your “right to know” and cover the news–except when the news organization deems it more important to cover it up. Right, AP?
See what others have said
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Trackbacks
- Bilal Hussein–Terrorist on the Payrol of the AP « Federal Way Conservative
- Cao's Blog
- Sierra Faith
- Bilal Hussein on Trial : Weblogs
- Ray Robison: Pointing out the obvious to the oblivious
- The Jawa Report
- OneFreeKorea » Iraq Phantom Count
- Michelle Malkin » Bilal Hussein update: Military details collaboration, MSM still in denial
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Categories: Bilal Hussein
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Why the 19 month wait to bring charges? Did they hold him for a year and a half without evidence, or have they just been sitting on evidence this whole time? Either way, they bungled it. If Iraq’s criminal justice system is anything resembling a fair system, the fact that they kept him holed up for a year and a half without the ability to mount a defense is going to be intensely damaging to their case.
It doesn’t matter how irrefutable the evidence is. If he was prevented from mounting a defense, it’s a sham, and a damn shame. If the allegations are true, it’d certainly help the military’s image (by showing that at least some of the regional coverage is biased). But if the trial is a sham, it’s going to leave them worse off.
This is why I seldom read my print newspaper. It carries AP an NYT’s articles that I know are probably scewed. Remember the altered photos that the NYT ran at the beginning of this war? The NYT was called on the carpet for them and has never recovered any credibility.
Operation Iraqi Freedom is succeeding. It is worth it. Freedom always is.
Ron Paul is never going to win anything.
How many times must AP abet the enemy before “issues” arise? I mean when we have a USA based news service being played like a violin by Islamic Nutcases , does any one care?
Outstanding work Michelle. You are truly in a league of your own. Of course, I’m sure the world citizens at the AP disagree.
Great coverage from a Great journalist. Thanks Michelle, I look forward to your updates as the court proceedings progress.
Is it your position that, because this guy is under US detention, he’s entitled to the due-process/speedy-trial rights of a US citizen? Even though he’s charged and will be tried under Iraqi law? I doubt he’d get any better treatment in Russia, Mark, but I suspect you’d feel right at home there. Cripes. Some guy says in another thread that the world’s overpopulated. Yeah…too many pinkos.
The AP and the majority of MSM have proven themselves to be traiterous in their reporting.
They have lied and picked up stories that have led to incitement of more violence against the United States Military.
They have behaved in a fashion that seriously calls into question their objectivity. I personally would like to see the media held to higher legal standard.
I really would like to see this reporter tried and thrown in jail for watching and participating in our soldiers getting killed and I hope someone in that jail exacts a most perfect revenge.
We really need to take another look at ‘freedom of the press’. We can only have freedoms so long as we are responsible for those freedoms. The press is telling sensational stories to make money. They are supposed to report news, but they don’t.
This is beautiful because this photo editor acknowledges that something wrong was done but denies responsibility at the same time. If the EDITOR isn’t responsible, then the photographer isn’t either.
I think that new laws need to be created to sentence and punish rogue editors who allow this type of treasonous and inaccurate information to be distributed as ‘fact’. Libel and Slander don’t seem to be enough for the law to keep our ‘free press’ honest.
As has been said, thanks Michelle for reporting FACTS. Rumors might sell papers and stories, but they endanger America. News organizations don’t seem to care. . . and they NEVER take responsibility.
Don’t count him out. I’ve never been a RP supporter, but I don’t really like any of the other candidates either (R or D). He doesn’t get much media coverage (not even in a lot of polls) but we just had a straw poll here and he won in a landslide.
The only thing I really disagree with RP about is the wars. However, I can respect him more than the Democrats because he voted his conscience before the war (against) when Hillary and Silky, and Obama would have too voted for the war and now are against the war.
I know it pains a lot of people, and I know I’m disappointing a lot of people, but Ron Paul seems like everything I agree with other than the Iraq and Afghanistan War (which arguably could have been handled differently).
I’d say ending the ‘war on drugs’ and putting the DEA agents on the border will do more to protect America than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Look for the blimp coming to a city near you - at the just the right time for the primary. One thing about RP, he makes the race interesting - and he knows how to run a grass roots campaign (unlike Rudy, Thompson, Hilary, Romney).
This guy is not a US citizen, and he is being held in a foreign country. He was helping crazy people kill other people, including US Soldiers. He deserves to be confined in any way without any due process…. He is getting what he deserves.
The top executives and reports who controlled this stringer at AP should also be arrested and charged. I’m sure they knew what he was up to, and I’m even suspicious that they were aiding his efforts.
This quote from an article over at American Thinker about Iran’s deception seems to fit.”the Shiite-created doctrines of “taqiiya” (deception) and kitman (dissembling) explicitly permit Muslims to lie to non-Muslims if such lying furthers Islamic interests.”
Clinton’s Muslim? Now I understand.
Thank you again Michelle you always do a good job of researching and linking to the facts available in your stories. Hopefully Bilal Hussein will be exposed for the terrorist collaborator he is and justice will be served. The Associated (with Terrorist) Press has done much to destroy their credibility in the way they have covered this war and no matter how they try to spin it they deserve the loss of readership the dinosaur printed media has earned.
He’s the worst kind of propagandist…aside from the lame stream media.
Apparently the Associated Press seems to be proffering that the letters AP are equivalent to ESP, in explaining how Mr. Hussein had the uncanny ability to know exactly when and where to place his cameras in order to capture the next big attack by the insurgents.
AP=L.A.M.E.
Why is these days that when a bad guy goes to trial, I get nervous???
I just can not depend on very much in the way of right vs. wrong anymore. Too many fools are willing to defend these horrible people and their criminal acts just to gain political favor.
What happened to honor and integrity?
Lets see, do I believe the AP and WaPo or the US government - not that hard a choice in this decade - used to be that the press was honest - not now.
Who is watching the watchers?
Oh, yeah… You. Thanks Michelle.
This garbage went pretty much unchallenged.
..a dry run? so to speak.
.
and this…
They believe that they, the AP, can control public relations/thinking because they are the AP. They produce the news, they control what will get picked up and printed in thousands of liberal newspapers. The AP is betting the case on it.
M Jaquith,
Let me get this straight. You are suggesting that they did not have evidence to arrest him/hold him? Or are you suggesting that the military release him, a suspected terrorist collaborator, in a war zone, before the Iraqi judge is prepared to hear the case? How is it that he was prevented from making a case? The AP has been making his case since he was arrested! Granted, it is a case based on lies, innuendo and by attacking the military, but it does appear to be his case.
Perhaps you meant that he should have had a hearing before being held for trial. Again, it is a war zone, and obviously the US military had some evidence that he was a collaborator. It would have been a shame, and a sham if he had been released. When I was in Iraq in my two tours, it was easily discerned which reporters had an agenda - were pulling for the US to lose, at any cost. Those reporters are not in jail, because there was no evidence that they were collaborators, even though that was the affect their biased reporting had on the effort. Look at Geraldo Irrelevant Rivera! He purposefully exposed the ongoing operations of a large USA unit at war, and was not jailed, or shot (though in WWII, he probably would be).
This was posted on the AP site:
Interesting that the AP feels the need to review the documentation. “We” need to see the docs that “they” were not given. How many editors and attorneys looked at that before it went up?
Seems the AP feels IT is on trial. Maybe for once they have it correct.
btw, that emphasis in the quote is mine. sorry to mislead.
I agree, his trial should have been much sooner, like up against the wall in a back alley in Fallujah. He no doubt has the blood of many Americans & Iraqis on his hands as do the editors of AP.
A=lways
P=athetic
Mr. Jaquith,
How can the trial be a sham when it has not occurred? Did you mean to say that the liberal media will excoriate the US and the US Armed Forces if we don’t follow their protocol — charging him when THEY want us to do so? If so, then what’s new about that?
Also being “held without charge” in a war zone is normal. Ask any POW. Real ones.
There is one possibilty that hasn’t been brought up and that has to deal with the issue of intelligence.
It stands to reason that before charging this broke back, that the US military would follow up any leads they may have found while questioning said named stringer.
The other important point that has been brought up is that the AP wants this guy treated with rights given American citizens and not as an enemy combatant.
Its situations like this that the articles of the Geneva Convention need strong review since the enemy we are fighting does not show the basic respect for the rules of war. If the articles indicate that a non-uniformed person fighting is to be executed, then lets do it-if not, its time to review it.
As far as the AP is concerned they justify why the blogsphere is doing phenomal (sp?) job and while the hacks (msm, et al) just aren’t cutting it.
GSP
“Got Sig?”
May the case and the evidence against BHussein be airtight, well-presented, and carried through to successful prosecution.
Perhaps it will send a message to the scum at AP, Reuters, and Al-Jazeera, that we are the United States of America— not the Third Reich, the Imperial Empire of Japan, Saddam Hussein, Syria, Iran or any of the other putrid excuses for a dictatorship that have plagued the Earth.
Stand tall American and keep playing by the rules. We rock.
OT-
On my roadrunner home page theres a poll “Who would you least like to win in 08?”
Right now Hillary leads the way with 46% No-one else even close….
I love it.
I love it when people think that everyone in the world are entitled to get our Constitutional Rights that are only guaranteed to American Citizens. Especially when they are screaming about giving them to the murderers in GitMo and other places. It just shows how ignorant these people are of the Constitution. Makes me chuckle a deep, low Santa-like chuckle. Ho ho ho.
RetFireman ,#29. Last week the questions from the conservatives on the SCOTUS(Scalia and Roberts) to the lawyers arguing for the enemy combatants were, “What precedent in US.law or back to English law is there for extending Constitutional rights to non-citizens? Namely access to US courts.” BUT, the liberals(Breyer)on the court were asking questions that indicated they thought these rights should be extended. The fact that it could be a close vote either way is cause for concern.
A new bumper sticker for 08:
HILLARY IS NOT THE ANSWER!
no liveblog for the debate on Univision tonight?
And on what basis should American rights be extended to non-citizens other than because some Liberal “feels” it should be? NOWHERE in the Constitution does it say so. In fact, the Constitution is pretty explicitin that these rights are extende ONLY to citizens of the United States, and CITIZENS ONLY. So, any Supreme Court Justice, or any Judge on any court anywhere, who decides to extend such rights to anyone other than to a citizen is, in fact, going directly against the Constitution. It is one of those things that is actually not open for interpretation…it is pretty well completely spelled out. Yet another reason why Liberals suck and can not be trusted in any court of law.
The AP is at it again. From the crew at Newsbusters: NBC to Air Freedom’s Watch Ads, AP Seems Displeased.. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/12/09/nbc-air-freedom-s-watch-ads-ap-seems-displeased
No, he’s entitled to the due-process/speedy-trial rights of an Iraqi citizen.
You don’t know that for a fact. So you’re as bad as the AP was when they were demanding that he be released without a trial. You’d have him sentenced without a trial.
He was held for a year and a half without charge. It has nothing about a judge being ready to hear the case. It’s about not holding people prisoner for long periods of time without charging them.
He was not granted access to any of the evidence being used against him. He still hasn’t. He was not told the charge that was going to be brought against him. So while they’re working on their case against him, he’s in the dark, in prison. By the chance he gets to start mounting a defense, the case will be two years cold. He has little chance of assembling witnesses or gathering evidence in his defense.
He’s not being accused of war crimes against the United States. He’s being charged with crimes under Iraqi law.