US news station sued over Bin Laden footage

DENVER - An Egyptian cameraman has sued ABC News for copyright infringement, claiming that rare footage he shot of Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan during the 1980s was used by the network without his permission.

In a suit filed August 31 in US District Court in Denver and made public this week, Essam Mohamed Aly Deraz seeks $10 million in damages and to bar ABC from further use of the still photos and video pictures that he took "at great risk to his personal safety."

ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said the network had not seen the lawsuit and he declined to comment.

The images depict bin Laden fighting with the Mujahideen, a collection of Islamic rebels who waged a guerrilla war against Soviet military forces that had invaded Afghanistan to back that country's Marxist regime during the 1980s.

"(Deraz) was the only cameraman with Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s, and his film and photographs were the only ones ever taken then that show Osama bin Laden in the battlefield," according to the lawsuit.

Deraz, who lives in Cairo, claims that in 1998 ABC News paid him a total of $15,000 to twice air the images on a "limited basis" but continued to use the pictures without his permission.

Deraz said he was "given unprecedented access" to film and photograph bin Laden at a Mujahideen camp in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan known as the Lion's Den.

Deraz also said ABC provided copies of his work to CNN and the BBC without compensating or crediting him.

The lawsuit, which accuses ABC of copyright infringement and deceptive trade practices, demands that the network cease airing the images and destroy all copies it has.

It was not clear why the case was filed in Denver, and Deraz's attorney, David Weinstein, was not immediately available for comment.

ABC is a unit of the Walt Disney Co.

- REUTERS