The New York Times acknowledged in Saturday’s editions that it incorrectly identified an Iraqi man in a front-page story as the hooded figure shown in a photograph from Abu Ghraib prison that became an icon of abuse by American captors.
In an editor’s note accompanying a front-page story on Ali Shalal Qaissi said the paper “did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi’s insistence that he was the man in the photograph.”
After the original story appeared March 11, the online magazine Salon.com challenged the man’s identity, based on an examination of 280 Abu Ghraib pictures it had been studying for weeks and an interview with an official from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. The Times said it was investigating the matter.
The Times said Qaissi and his lawyers maintain that he was photographed in a similar position and shocked with wires, but that Qaissi acknowledged he is not the man in the specific photograph.