BAGHDAD – An international media watchdog says a freelance journalist imprisoned in northern Iraq for writing about homosexuality has been pardoned and released.
Adel Hussein was convicted of violating a public decency law by writing an article about sodomy and health in April 2007 in the independent weekly Hawlati. He was sentenced on Nov. 24 to six months in prison.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday that Hussein was pardoned Sunday by Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region.
He was serving his sentence at Mahata prison in Irbil, which is about 220 miles 350 kilometers north of Baghdad.
